Moorish Music

Moorish music is the Arabo-Andalusian classical tradition of the Maghreb — the art music inherited from Muslim Iberia and preserved in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya after 1492. Its core form is the nuba, a suite of vocal and instrumental movements in a single melodic mode, setting muwashshah and zajal poetry in classical and dialectal Arabic. Regional schools differ — Moroccan al-Ala, Algerian san'a, gharnati and malouf, Tunisian and Libyan malouf — but share the ensemble of oud, violin, rabab, qanun and frame drums, and a repertory that functions as the region's classical canon.