The instruments and rhythms of Palestinian folk music
I can identify some key instruments and understand some key rhythms in Palestinian folk music.
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- Year 10
- OCR
The instruments and rhythms of Palestinian folk music
I can identify some key instruments and understand some key rhythms in Palestinian folk music.
Copyrighted materials: to view and download resources from this lesson, you’ll need to be in the UK and
Lesson details
Key learning points
- Arabic music has a long and complex history and is extremely varied.
- Two key instruments in Palestinian folk music are the doumbek and oud.
- The doumbek uses three sounds - doum (middle of the drum), tek (edge of the drum) and ka (ring finger on edge of drum).
- Palestinian folk music uses a wazn, a rhythmic cycle or pattern. Maqsum and saidi are two examples of this.
Keywords
Doumbek - a drum used in Arabic and Palestinian folk music; it is played with the hands and fingertips
Oud - a stringed instrument with 11 strings used in Arabic and Palestinian music; it is an early predecessor to the guitar
Wazn - a repeating rhythmic cycle or pattern that forms the rhythmic basis of a composition
Maqsum - a common wazn across the Middle East
Saidi - a specific upbeat wazn that uses fast rhythmic patterns
Common misconception
Hand drum technique is the same across the world.
Techniques are very different on different hand drums around the world. Tabla, doumbek and djembe all use very different techniques, for example, the doumbek technique uses fingertips in a way that djembe does not.
Equipment
DAW, notation software or class set of hand drums.
Licence
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