Middle Eastern Folk Music

Middle Eastern folk music comprises the village, pastoral and popular traditional repertoires of the Arab world, Turkey and Iran, transmitted orally and performed for weddings, harvests, line dances and communal celebration. Its melodies draw on the maqam modal system but favour direct, memorable contours suited to group singing and dance, accompanied by instruments such as the mijwiz reed pipe, rababa spike fiddle, tabla and frame drums. Regional branches include Levantine dabke, Egyptian shaabi roots and the regional folk styles of Persia, and its singers range from anonymous village performers to national figures such as *Fairuz* and *Mohammad-Reza Shajarian*, who carried folk repertoires onto the concert stage.