{"product_id":"arabic-music-and-the-oud-paperback","title":"ARABIC MUSIC AND THE OUD - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eMany books have been written on the subject of Arabic music, most of them\u003cbr\u003e\nby Western authors who presented the subject from a Western perspective with\u003cbr\u003e\nno knowledge of Arabic music other than from theories reported by authors\u003cbr\u003e\nrelying mainly on other Western and often inaccurate sources.\u003cbr\u003e\nAhmed MukhtarÕs book is most important because, precisely, it narrates his\u003cbr\u003e\naccount of Arabic music, and especially oud music, from the perspective of an\u003cbr\u003e\naccomplished oudist and composer who has received his knowledge principally\u003cbr\u003e\nfrom oral transmission which sometimes conflicted with historiography.\u003cbr\u003e\nHowever, oral transmission is a fundamental epistemological tool of Arabic\u003cbr\u003e\nculture of which the West is suspicious. I have often heard stories about early\u003cbr\u003e\nArabic music by musicians from Damascus, to Baghdad, to Fez which I often\u003cbr\u003e\ndisdained as tales but then, decades later, I found out that they were supported\u003cbr\u003e\nby manuscripts. In a land which commits its Holy Book to the memory of the\u003cbr\u003e\nHafiz, is it not reasonable to assume that the history of music, too would have\u003cbr\u003e\nbeen committed to orality? Western musicology should revise their views about\u003cbr\u003e\nthe transmission of Arabic theory and rely on probability rather than on\u003cbr\u003e\nsubjectivity. Was it not Farmer who said that the Arabs had a lute twice the size\u003cbr\u003e\nof the normal type? I never heard such a story from the mouths of any Arab\u003cbr\u003e\nmusiciansÉ\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ahmed Mukhtar","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44275325173921,"sku":"9781008945272","price":77.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0462\/1120\/3233\/files\/8mrz9j-front-shortedge-384_609c1df5-80b1-4b46-a58c-0f1ac26f5596.jpg?v=1748231232","url":"https:\/\/bookswholesale.myshopify.com\/products\/arabic-music-and-the-oud-paperback","provider":"BooksWholesale","version":"1.0","type":"link"}