World Music: Andalusian classical music

* First Video: "Morocco: Mohamed Bajdoub"




* Second Video: "Algeria: Farid Khoudja - Complete Andalous Concert"




* Third Video: "Tunisia: Kantara-Riadh Fehri"





Andalusian classical music was allegedly born in the Emirate of Cordoba (Al-Andalus) in the 9th century. The Persian musician, resident in Iraq, Ziryâb (d. 857), who later became court musician of Abd al-Rahman II in Cordoba, is sometimes credited with its invention. Later, the poet, composer and philosopher Ibn Bajjah (d. 1139) of Saragossa is said to have combined the style of Ziryâb with Western approaches to produce a wholly new style that spread across Iberia and North Africa.

By the 11th century CE Moorish Spain and Portugal had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually to Provence, influencing French troubadours and trouveres and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. The English words lute, rebec, guitar, and naker derive from the Arabic oud, rabab, qithara and naqareh, although some Arabic terms had been revived from the Greek and other cultures.

The classical music of Andalusia, al-ala reached North Africa via centuries of cultural exchange, the Almohad dynasty and then the Marinid dynasty and the Abdalwadid being in power both in Al-Andalus and North Africa (the Maghreb).

Mass resettlements of Muslims and Sephardi Jews from Cordoba, Sevilla, Valencia and Granada, fleeing the Reconquista, further expanded the reach of Andalusian music.

In his book "Jews of Andalusia and the Maghreb" (freely available on the net) on the musical traditions in Jewish societies of North Africa, Haïm Zafani says: "In the Maghreb and especially in Morocco, the Muslims and Jews have piously preserved the Spanish-Arabic music .... In Spain and Morocco, Jews were ardent maintainers of Andalusian music and the zealous guardians of its old traditions ...." Over Morocco in the same book, this author states have managed to get their hands on a copy of the directory of Andalusian music written in 1786 by Al Haik (of Tetouan, Morocco) traveling in Muslim closed and insiders Jews (of the towns of Tetouan, Tangier, Casablanca, Meknes, Mogador-Essaouira, El Jadida-Mazagan ....) copying sparingly. He also succeeded in having put hands on a rare repertoire of songs maures of Granada and Cordoba printed in 1886/1887.

If the term Gharnati refers in the region of Tlemcen, to the entire directory Andalusian scholar, in Morocco it designates a distinct musical style of the Andalusian in addition to the much larger directory of "Tab Al Ala" style as confirmed by the authors Rachid Aous, Mohammed Habib Samrakandi pages 15 and 24 in their book "Music of Algeria".

The North African cities have inherited particularly Andalusian musical style of Granada are also mentioned (pages 72/73) in the book "The Literature of Al-Andalus" (freely available on the net).

The Nuba of Morocco have been identified in the eighteenth century by the musician Al Haïk from Tetouan.