Oriental Jewish Music

Oriental Jewish music, in Hebrew muzika mizrahit, is the popular music created in Israel by Jewish communities originating in the Arab and Muslim world — Yemenite, Moroccan, Iraqi, Kurdish and Persian Jews. It joins Middle Eastern melodic practice, melismatic singing and instruments such as the oud, qanun and bouzouki to Western pop harmony, electric guitar and drum kit, producing a danceable song form sung mainly in Hebrew with Arabic, Greek and Turkish borrowings. Excluded from Israeli state radio for decades, the style spread through a cassette economy before its singers, led by *Zohar Argov* and *Ofra Haza*, carried it to the centre of Israeli culture.