The music of Oman has been strongly affected by the country's coastal location, with Omani sailors interacting with, and bringing back music from, Egypt, Tanzania and elsewhere. More recently, a Portuguese occupation has left its own marks, while geographic neighbors like the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Iran have also had a profound influence. In contrast to other Arab countries, Omani traditional music has a strong emphasis on rhythm.
Traditional music marks all the stages in the life of an Omani, including birth, circumcision, marriage and death. In contrast to many Arab countries, all Omanis participate in music, men and women, young and old.
Liwa and Fann at-Tanbura are types of music and dance performed mainly in communities of descendants of Bantu peoples from the African Great Lakes region.
The Omani Centre for Traditional Music claims that Arabic music in Oman can be characterized by "tetrachords with typical Arabic intervals, including three-quarter tones taken from the Arabic musical scales; the maqamat". [1]
Notable Omani musicians include Salim Rashid Suri, the "Singing Sailor", a 20th-century singer and oud player from Sur who combined strains of the ṣawt of the northern Persian Gulf and other musical traditions of the Indian Ocean as a pioneer of the genre called Ṣawt al-Khaleej ("Voice of the Gulf").
There is also a very small underground metal scene with bands like Arabia and Belos emerging from there, the former moving to the UK.
Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is a country in West Asia. It is located on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and overlooks the mouth of the Persian Gulf. It shares land borders with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, while sharing maritime borders with Iran and Pakistan. The capital and largest city is Muscat. Oman has a population of nearly 4.7 million and is the 124th most-populous country. The coast faces the Arabian Sea on the southeast, and the Gulf of Oman on the northeast. The Madha and Musandam exclaves are surrounded by United Arab Emirates on their land borders, with the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman forming Musandam's coastal boundaries.
Arabic music is the music of the Arab world with all its diverse music styles and genres. Arabic countries have many rich and varied styles of music and also many linguistic dialects, with each country and region having their own traditional music.
Kuwait is well known in the region for its exploration of many different and new forms of music and dance. Kuwait is the birthplace of various popular musical genres such as sawt. Kuwait is widely considered the centre of traditional music in the GCC region.
Sawt is a kind of popular music found in Kuwait and Bahrain.
Sohar is the capital and largest city of the Al Batinah North Governorate in Oman. An ancient capital of the country that once served as an important Islamic port town on the Gulf of Oman, Sohar has also been credited as the mythical birthplace of Sinbad the Sailor. It was historically known as Mazūn (مَزُوْن).
The Sultanate of Muscat and Oman, also known briefly as the State of Muscat and Oman during the rule of Taimur bin Feisal, was a sovereign state that encompassed the present-day Sultanate of Oman and parts of present-day United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, in the second half of the 19th century and 20th century. Ruled by the Busaid dynasty, it was established as a result of the partition of the Omani Empire upon the death of its last ruler Said bin Sultan. The Sultanate transitioned into a new form of government after the palace coup of 23 July 1970 in which the sultan Said bin Taimur was immediately deposed in favor of his son Qaboos bin Said.
Khaliji music is the music of Eastern Arabia, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and it is popular across the Arab world. It is traditionally characterized by heavy use of the rebab, oud and other string instruments such as the violin, the occasional use of habbān, and the inclusion of percussion instruments such as the mirwas, tabl, and duff drums. Khaliji music first started as a bedouin tradition with poetry sung by a tribe's shaa'ir, which means poet, usually accompanied by a rebab, the lyrics dealt with tales of honor, love, camel riders, and glory warriors.
The yowlah, is a weapon dance of the United Arab Emirates, traditionally performed during weddings, celebrations, and other events. The dance is accompanied by traditional music, and men and women are represented in separate groups of dancers. The yowlah originated as a Bedouin war dance where men would spin rifles after victory in a battle. There is also a variation from the standard yowlah known as the razfah ; and the ardah is sometimes considered a form of the yowlah.
Līwa is a Khaleeji traditional dance of African origin performed in Eastern Arabia, mainly within communities of descendants of people from the Swahili Coast. It is also performed by the African-descended Sheedi community, as well as the Baloch of Makran Coast and Karachi area.
There is a rich and ancient culture in Eastern Arabia. The culture in this region has always been oriented towards the sea.
Aziz El-Shawan was one of the most prominent Egyptian composers of the twentieth century. He completed his primary and secondary education at the St. Joseph – La Salle College in Khoronfish, Cairo where he also received a Higher Diploma in Commercial Studies. He studied the violin privately with the German Joseph von Aubervon, a student of Jan Kubelick, and joined the school's choir and band where he played the clarinet and French horn. His violin teacher obtained a scholarship for him to study at the Berlin Conservatory, however, his father objected to his interest in pursuing a musical career. An accident disabled one of the fingers of his left hand, obliging him to give up his dream of being a virtuoso violinist. He then studied piano, theory, harmony, composition and orchestration with the Italian Menato and the Russian Orlovitsky who were part of a community of European musicians and music teachers who lived and worked in cosmopolitan Cairo. El-Shawan held several administrative positions, most importantly at the Philips International Company where he founded a record production department. He was director of the Soviet Cultural Center in Cairo from 1952 up to 1967. This position enabled him to travel to Moscow in 1956 where some of his early works were performed by the Radio Moscow Orchestra conducted by Aram Khatchaturian and published on LP by the Melodiya state record company, including the Fantasia for Orchestra (1945), the Symphonic Poem ‘Atshan Ya Sabay (1946), and the overture of Opera ‘Antara (1947). He also came in contact with the music of several contemporary composers, most notably the Russian Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), the Armenian Aram Khatchturian and the Azerbajianis Uzeyir Hadjibekov, Kara Karayev and Fikret Amirov. In addition to the influence of Rachmaninov and the Russian Five, El-Shawan saw the style of these west and central Asian composers as a model of a contemporary musical idiom inspired in traditional music. In Cairo, some of his early works were premiered in 1954 at the American University's Ewart Memorial Hall by a private orchestra that he hired and conducted as the state funded Cairo Symphny Orchestra had not yet been founded.
Fann aṭ-Ṭanbūra is a traditional music and dance genre in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, especially Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman. Musically, the tanbūra instrument plays a central role, along with several drums and the manjur— an instrument made from a large number of goat hooves attached to a type of apron which is wrapped around the waist of the performer.
The mirwās or marwas, plural marāwīs is a small double-sided, high-pitched hand drum originally from the Middle East. It is a popular instrument in the Arab States of the Persian Gulf, used in sawt and fijiri music. It is also common in Kuwait and Yemen.
The Wajihids were an Arab dynasty that ruled in coastal Oman in the early and mid-10th century AD. Their capital was the town of Suhar, after moving there from Al-Buraimi Oasis or Tawam, where they had been in the 9th century.
The Omani Empire was a maritime empire, vying with Portugal and Britain for trade and influence in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. After rising as a regional player in the 18th century, the empire at its peak in the 19th century saw its influence or control extend across the Strait of Hormuz to modern-day Iran and Pakistan, and as far south as Cape Delgado. After the death of Said bin Sultan in 1856 the empire was divided between his sons into two sultanates, an African section ruled by Majid bin Said and an Asian section ruled by Thuwaini bin Said.
Bithnah is a village in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates (UAE), long occupying a strategic location in the Wadi Ham, which is the only natural link to the interior of the UAE and the Persian Gulf from the East Coast city, and Emirate of Fujairah.
Salim Rashid Suri was a 20th-century ṣawt singer and oud player from Oman. He is particularly associated with the ṣawt genre called Ṣawt al-Khaleej.
St. Francis Xavier Church is a parish of the Roman Catholic Church in the town of Salalah, Oman.
Ahmed Faraj Abdullah Al-Rawahi, commonly known as Ahmed Al-Rawahi, is an Omani footballer who plays for Al-Seeb in the Oman Professional League.
