West Asian Music

West Asian Music is the registry's umbrella for the art and folk traditions of the Middle East and the Caucasus: Persian classical music with its radif repertoire, Turkish folk and Ottoman art music, Arabic maqam traditions, Armenian duduk music and the mugham of Azerbaijan. Common threads are modal improvisation, microtonal melody, long-breathed singing set to classical poetry, and instruments such as the oud, tar, kamancheh, ney and duduk. Its modern canon runs from *Umm Kulthum* and *Fairuz* to *Mohammad-Reza Shajarian*, *Djivan Gasparyan* and *Kayhan Kalhor* — a vast region whose musics share more with each other than with any neighboring system.