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Lesson 1 of 5
  • 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.

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Lesson 1 of 5
New
New
  • 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

Copyrights help

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Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. Arabic music has a long and complex history and is extremely varied.
  2. Two key instruments in Palestinian folk music are the doumbek and oud.
  3. The doumbek uses three sounds - doum (middle of the drum), tek (edge of the drum) and ka (ring finger on edge of drum).
  4. 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.


To help you plan your year 10 music lesson on: The instruments and rhythms of Palestinian folk music, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...

Encourage pupils to explore different sounds on the drum, particularly when adding fills into the wazn. The key is to ensure that the main rhythmic pulse (doum and tek) stays constant, and to add creative fills around that.
Teacher tip

Equipment

DAW, notation software or class set of hand drums.

Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2025), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

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