วีดีโอ

This is really amazing, I really appreciate the hard work you are doing to uploads these kinds of Lessons. Supposed I ask for a second opinion, my Violin friend from Tunisia once told me to imitate the taqsim from other instruments such as Kanun , Oud and ney , What is your view of this Sir?

your daughter is such a great assistant love how attentive and involved and loving she is even to the music thank you so much

Getting microtones with saxophone is a challenge but i'm slowly managing it. Thank you. 🦆

Well done ❤

It is sad to hear the idea of being colonized in any way was perceived as an insult by the woman toward the end. It's a "c" word, like the "g" (genocide) word that some people are very touchy about. The problem is one of deeper understanding and humility, ergo the reference to Edward Said is very useful. You did a great job, Sami and with considerable restraint especially given current circumstances, in addressing this. For those who haven't read it, a short text that rips into Western colonialism spectacularly and remains relevant today is Aimé Césaire's 1950 essay, Discourse on Colonialism.

Sami, your work is so inspiring as someone trying to learn different musical languages (including this one), and teach them in a natural and authentic way. I've been telling some of my colleagues in the States and Canada about your work, and it might be really great to have a discussion on their podcast about audiation, music learning and education if you ever feel interested. Am shooting this video their way because I think everything you do in your work is everything they love talking about! Love from Aotearoa P.S. my Huzzam still needs work, so I really need to run through this a few times. What a great lesson, and great to feel like I'm there in the space with you and everyone learning.

que maravilla, que talento, una verdadera obra de arte y dos ángulos diferentes para la grabación, hermoso video!!!

That's precious. Thank you!

Yes! ❤

Lovely work, both on the track and providing the tunings. I’ve been enjoying them immensely, using your book as a reference on the side. Thank you!

muy util, gracias por el aporte!!

So, first of all, I'm obliged to b again thank you for all you do Sami-- these videos are such wonderful and rich resources, and every few months I'll revisit a lesson like this. I find i get more out of it each time and something new clicks which I had missed previously. I did find it very difficult to find a recording of this version of jadaka el ghaithum -- it seems there are 2 melodies/mwashahas for the same lyrics and the melody popularized by Fairouz dominates the landscape. (At least for an anglophone that can't speak, read or write in Arabic..) Could you recommend a good recording? You mentioned one in your huzam Playlist, but i still had difficulty... My other question is about something you said regarding the modulation to Rast on 6 in that piece-- emphasizing that it was going down to Jins UPPER rast on 3. I don't see why the distinction is important, other than to emphasize that Rast tonic is on 6 and not 3...but as far as tones and intervals are concerned, is it not equivalent? This leads into the question of more broadly why you [and Johnny Farraj] felt it was necessary to define Upper Rast as its own jins in the first place..? Is it not identical to jins Rast, but without the final 5th note? Perhaps I should ask: is Jins Upper Rast NOT played exactly the same as restarting Jins Rast on the 5th scale degree? If not, how is it different? Is the neutral 3rd (functionally the 7th scale degree) played slightly higher [or lower] in upper rast? Or is it just conceptual to make clear where the tonic is, and that you're not just moving the whole maqam up a 5th and changing the tonic? I feel like this is a very basic question and I just accepted it, but have never understood why you felt it was necessary to name and differentiate...?

Kurdi Maqam Shukraan

too much modern politics bs.

Thank you!

What an insanely cool Maqam. I’ve always been fascinated with the lack of a traditional octave. This video succinctly and beautifully shows how to handle what’s above the jins. Thank you!

Bravo in all aspects!

This is sensational!!!!

halo from israel thank you for the lesson ;)

Hello Megumi , I have missed you! Say hi to the master

収録楽しかったです🥰🥰

ha this is so cool, and i missed these jins lessons

🎉🎉🎉

Thank you Sami Very helpful Is there a website or a place that I can get Arabic songs transliterated to English so that I can learn to sing them with proper pronunciation?

Thanks for this thought provoking talk!

Instead of using notation they should join the modern world and use videos where there is no compromise.

The modes were thought of in descending order in ancient Greece and the names got inverted by scholars, Plato meant the Locrean mode should be banned as sorrowful (it does sound sorrowful while the lydian mode does not sound sorrowful) Plato meant the Phrygian mode sounds "drunken" in the sense that a drunk is known to cry , (its also a sorrowful mode like the Locrean mode and unlike the Ionian mode). Plato meant the Dorian mode and the Ionain mode were the only two scales to be allowed. I agree with you about the idea that there is no right and wrong tuning based on mathematical analysis and that numbers can not justify music which is only justified by emotions. I also think that you are right that music theory can become a form of musical bigotry used for nationalistic purposes. Ive long pointed out that a great deal of popular music from blues to country to jazz to R&B to rock and the like uses way more than 12 notes per octave, that its more like 36 or more and that not only do the artists repeat these reliably, so can the audience if singing along. This means that although math can provide you with information about the physics of sound and of music it can not provide you with a means of understanding music any more than a black and white drawing can make you understand what the colorful painting will really look like. I think it works like this, each interval evokes an INHERENT feeling, different intervals different feelings. People can FEEL these differences in intervals so can follow very complex intonations of melody not so much by remembering the intervals but by remembering the moods that the intervals gave them, you will automatically know what to do to get a feeling. Artists who are used to being confined to a particular set of intervals become good at structuring the music to match the moods of the given approved set of intervals. Intervals that are outside the set are not part of their expertise, so sound like "mistakes" or "fouls" to them. After a time each region or faction becomes known by the limits they impose on themselves in the musical arts so that the often hostile surrounding factions may all be written off as "out of tune" and "off time" when the need for vilifying them is needed when any conflict emerges. This kind of artistic bigotry is a near universal component of human culture in general, and the bigger the empire the greater the damage done by the bigotry. In every empire musical theorists can become musical bigots complicit in some form of artistic oppression

It’s all about language. Everything comes with the language; how you talk, dress, handicrafts, tools, and all kinds of literature. One thing that’s happening is that more and more people are joining the first few at the fire and bringing their ideas.

Thanks for posting this lecture it was very engaging even though it was just a video on a screen. I find notation based learning impossible cus of my mental disability so it's nice hearing someone affirm the importance of learning music orally . The idea that notation is the be all and end all of music pedagogy, drains it of so much life and I think turns away a lot of people who would otherwise want to be musicians from learning music. Whenever I tried to learn music at school it always cooled my ambition to be a musician. It was only years after when I picked up a saxophone and just played acapella, whatever felt right, that I realised music was something I could actually do. Now two years later , I play saxophone and piano pretty well, and am slowly learning oud. It turns out I'm naturally quite musical (people assume I've been playing since childhood) but I would've never learned that had I gone through a 'proper' musical education. I just think there are as many ways to be a musician as there are people, and a rigid written music education lacks the kind of dialogue between student and teacher that could actually lead to someone flourishing. (I also think this in some way relates to larger problems with education, but if I say any more I'll just be quoting Paulo Freire verbatim). Sorry to waffle so much!

I enjoy many forms of folk music traditions, both European and otherwise. Because of the way they have been handed down orally, and by demonstration in the case of instruments, they don't generally lend themselves to being shoehorned into the musical notation used in Western classical music, but there is no reason not to devise, or attempt to devise a written notation specifically for a particular musical form, as per the 1932 Maqam conference. To suggest that to do so is somehow an expression of colonialist white supremacy is just crap.

Excellent lecture, Sami! And great job answering the questions at the end. You're so good at articulating your thoughts. Thank you!

Thank you! Please tell me where people meet to discuss these ideas in order to improve music education, and to resolve other communication issues in passing; simply since these concepts (well, actually the 'real thing', the practice, its applied meaning towards sharing / communication) are so powerful. I found Saussure and the linguistic approach immensly helpful, especially having grown up in a culture that wasn't the one of my family; having opted to learn yet another musical culture; which finally led me to become an immigrant to another culture myself. Stark contrast to the approaches I found in those high places for learning. Those cult(ural) practices felt more like some made up - not arbitrary - rite of passage, as opposed to learning towards a deeper understanding, practical application or meaningful sharing. The latter meaning how to become a teacher - luckily I found very good teachers despite the overall setup of 'Western learning'

Thank you very much, Professor! I'm now in my late 30's and trying to reconnect with my family's Lebanese heritage that has been lost through migration and cultural erasure in the years in Brazil. That's why I'm learning Arabic and playing the oud. It's been quite a challenge to learn being away from people who can teach from inside the musical culture. And as a linguist and language teacher I can completely relate to the points you make in your talk. Thanks for your wonderful work. Free Palestine!

I think we should stop saying that mathematics is somehow western. There's really no support for this claim. The ancient Greeks should also not be considered western. They were much more part of an eastward-looking culture with deep intercourse with other cultures to its east. The Arabs preserved and continued to develop this mathematical culture, which was, of course, not limited to the Greeks. The numbers themselves come from India, Persia, Arabs and cultures of the east. We still call them Arabic numerals. Why do we allow the fallacy that it is western to be repeated? I know you're arguing that it is used as a form of western colonialism, but even as such, the idea is based on a fallacy. Edit: I wrote that before I got to the point in your lecture where you talked about this very subject.

❤🎉❤

As a self taught musician, I came to Western theory for the authority. Like going to a manual to learn how some machine works. This talk helped open up the concept of music for me as something more than a series of plans and diagrams. Regarding it as language first seems more intuitive anyway. Thank you for the work , education, and your political insight.

Impressive and necessary perspective. Thank you, sir.

Marxism ruins everything.

🔥

Interesting. On your critique - is your main issue with equal temperament and a lack of granularity, or do you find the whole of western music theory useless? I've found enormous value in using western theory as a musician -- cadences, interval function, measures, etc have made learning Turkish and Arab music MUCH easier than it would be otherwise.

I'm actually a Comparative Linguist, and at the same time, I am also a disciple in Byzantine Music, and often study Middle Eastern Music, mainly the Ottoman Makam repertoire, which seems to be the closest to the Byzantine repertoire, and own a Saz at home. I am deeply grateful for the praise you brought to my field of Research, that is Linguistics; I often do find a lot of Western Musicians to have a strange attitude regarding Music, rules, and other normative elements, when I come from a descriptive, comparative background.

I attended an Honors College in the 90s where we felt so modern and progressive because we had a Western Traditions course and a Non-Western Traditions course that were given equal time and emphasis. Ironically, the non-Western portion was in fact devoted almost entirely to peoples of the Western Hemisphere. Sigh. We thought we were taking the baby steps in the right direction but could scarcely imagine the enormity of the road ahead. This talk is brilliantly enlightening and truly necessary.

This was a wonderful talk, Sami. I would add that in addition to the compelling points you made about the political and cultural reasons for keeping alive the oral/aural tradition of learning this music by ear, another key advantage to this method is its universality. The call and response method you employ both here and in your maqam lessons allows Anyone to learn the fundamentals of the music, quickly and intuitively-- with any instrument or no instrument. Even folks who don't speak a word of English can learn a ton from your maqan lessons! While your verbal explanations are also invaluable, just from the name of the jins and the call/response repetitions of musical vocabulary, one can learn a ton. Really appreciate your work, sir. You've changed my life by making this stuff accessible to me, and I'm sure I am not alone! ❤

Let's face it - eastern music is just as elitist as the western classical music, - or in fact, even much more elitist. People who can play instruments or sing can be counted on the fingers on one hand. Learning to be a good musician in the East involves years of learning and most probably family ties, you just can be a musician if you don't belong to a musician's family. Of course there is a folk tradition - but maqam isn't a folk tradition, this is an extremely well-developed field of professional singers and musicians, the folk music is a carbon copy of it, it shares some features of the elitist music, but the differences can be much more prominent than the similarities. The professional music in the East is just the same sign of power and privileges of the elites over the people as it is in the West. By defending it you aren't serving any justice. Thus the second point - the West attempting to figure out the "rules" isn't necessary an attempt to get the power over the culture. You are completely missing the Enlightenment narrative that saw "rules" as a way to bring the knowledge to the masses. Westerners are looking for the rules to make the cultural phenomena accessible and, most importantly, "learnable" for the masses. Anyone should be able to count, write, read and play maqam! And this is a striking difference between the elitist Eastern musical tradition and the mass education in the West. Of course, in the modern East there is musical education for the masses - which is essentially a copycat of the Western musical education sans the western methodology because the "rules" aren't written. So, what are you defending? Those who tries to keep the music out of the reach of the masses?

Lots of paradoxes here (in a good way!). Each individual observation here is well taken, and I think all exist in tension with one another. Eg Europeans as both agents and subjects of colonization, music theory as descriptive vs. generative, music as act/practice/object, academic models are all wrong but some are useful etc. But this sword cuts against all simplifications. I wonder if his thesis that music theory is a slippery slope to genocide is merely there to get the audience to pay attention (it worked on me!), but it’s obvious that his real thesis is that those who study music should be more humble, patient, and discriminating, and circumspect about generalizations and models. I think that’s actually a very strong statement, always import to reiterate, and beautifully supported by his examples, but not as flashy.

Perhaps there are other pathways to explain the oversimplification. Music theorists spend most of their careers writing about music. What you are talking about is not readily conveyed through words as you rightfully say. Theorists feel they need something to write, so they come up with some way of describing which ends up simplifying and stripping away the 'soul' of the music. It doesn't necessarily need to be some nefarious power structure intent on erasing indigenous culture, just someone trying to communicate some foreign concepts in their own language. We can thank some early and mid twentieth century musicologists for preserving some of that original music in rare recordings, but also in written scores. Audio recording was not readily available then. I think anyone who becomes deeply interested will dig to find the real essence of the music and realize written scores are insufficient.

i so deeply enjoy hearing you speak on such topics!

24:56 - I needed to hear this - thank you.

Are you familiar with Ozan Yarman's dissertation on developing a 79/80 note scale that attempts to capture and notate the intonation of pitches used in practice in Makam music? Do you think it has merit, or is it missing the point?

WOW I would love to see Zikrayat live! I was born and raised in the states, however I’m Egyptian and your channel helps me understand classic Egyptian music. This is so beautiful! 😊