Arabic Maqam

Arab art music built on maqam, carried by quarter tones and improvised melodic paths.

Related

ModeThe oudThe neyViolin

Maqam is the melodic frame of Arab art music, more than a scale: it prescribes a path, resting points and a character.

Origins and era

Pre-Islamic poetry and caravan song supplied material. The Abbasid court in Baghdad absorbed Persian, Byzantine and Greek theory, and al-Farabi and Safi al-Din wrote on intervals and modes. Cairo, Beirut and Aleppo formed distinct schools in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century Umm Kulthum and Fairuz carried maqam into radio and film.

What you hear

Start with quarter tones and augmented seconds. A maqam is built from tetrachords, each with a direction. Taqsim is solo improvisation that states the mode, climbs by degrees and returns to the tonic. Ensembles play unison melody over a drone, without functional harmony. Voices use heavy ornament, rhythm follows iqa cycles, and oud, qanun, ney and violin supply the colours.

Key figures

Umm Kulthum pushed long phrases and emotion to the limit, Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab joined film song to maqam, and Fairuz with the Rahbani brothers took Arab song worldwide. Munir Bashir represents the oud at the other end.

Lineage

Arabian poetry recitation, Persian and Byzantine music feed in; Turkish makam, Andalusian nuba, Arab pop and jazz fusion come out. The melodic path became a teachable system.

Common misunderstandings

Maqam is not one scale, since the same notes can become different maqams through direction and resting points. Arab music is not always quarter-tone either, as some maqams avoid microtones. Treating it as an exotic scale misses improvisation and ornament.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry Maqam（Oxford University Press），用于核对马卡姆理论与年代
• Habib Hassan Touma, The Music of the Arabs（Amadeus Press, 1996），用于核对音列、乐器与表演形态

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.