Arab Music from Iraq:
Rahim Alhaj, oud; Souhail Kaspar, percussion

1. Dream (Rahim Alhaj)
2. Home Again (Rahim Alhaj)
3. Maqam Ajam (traditional)
—Taqsim
—Song: The Beautiful One Passed Me (Marru 'Alayya al-Hilwin)
4. Maqam Rast (traditional)
—Taqsim
—Song: The Night Is Sweet and Beautiful (Il Layla Hilwa)
5. Maqam Hijaz (traditional)
—Taqsim
—Song: Atop the Palm Tree (Fawg in-Nakhal)

Intermission

6. Gray Morning (R. Alhaj)
7. Maqam Segah (aka Sika)
—Song: The Girl with Her Eyes on Me (Ya Bint w-'Enich 'Alayya)
8-11. Traditional Iraqi, Egyptian, and Syrian songs (8:57–19:20)
12. Percussion demonstration (19:34–23:40)

The oldest known image of an oud-like instrument is on a clay seal from the Sumerian city of Uruk (4500–3100 B.C.E). A wood-bellied lute also appears on royal seals and other iconography from the same period. It is an instrument tantalizingly similar to (and perhaps a direct ancestor of) the oud itself. Unfortunately, little is currently known about the development of this instrumental tradition between the fall of Babylon to the Persians in 539 B.C.E. and the centuries that preceded the founding of Islam in 622 C.E.

The oud held a respected position as a solo instrument with its own distinct repertoire during much of the Abbasid period (750–1258), during which the royal court and capital of the Islamic empire were established at Baghdad. Iraqi musicians today describe that time as a golden age for Iraqi music. Rahim Alhaj, for example, provides a strong sense of aesthetic and musical continuity, as did his teachers and their teachers. Yet he also recognizes that Iraqi culture, including its music, has changed dramatically in the last century, and that he himself is an agent of musical change. His recording for Smithsonian Folkways is comprised primarily of taqasim, instrumental improvisations offering an early twenty first-century interpretation of maqāms, including material derived from the Iraqi maqām tradition as well as more recently created compositions.
—Adapted from notes by D. A. Sonneborn for When the Soul Is Settled: Music of Iraq (Smithsonian Folkways, 2006), www.folkways.si.edu.

The oldest known image of an oud-like instrument is on a clay seal from the Sumerian city of Uruk (4500–3100 B.C.E). A wood-bellied lute also appears on royal seals and other iconography from the same period. It is an instrument tantalizingly similar to (and perhaps a direct ancestor of) the oud itself. Unfortunately, little is currently known about the development of this instrumental tradition between the fall of Babylon to the Persians in 539 B.C.E. and the centuries that preceded the founding of Islam in 622 C.E.

The oud held a respected position as a solo instrument with its own distinct repertoire during much of the Abbasid period (750–1258), during which the royal court and capital of the Islamic empire were established at Baghdad. Iraqi musicians today describe that time as a golden age for Iraqi music. Rahim Alhaj, for example, provides a strong sense of aesthetic and musical continuity, as did his teachers and their teachers. Yet he also recognizes that Iraqi culture, including its music, has changed dramatically in the last century, and that he himself is an agent of musical change. His recording for Smithsonian Folkways is comprised primarily of taqasim, instrumental improvisations offering an early twenty first-century interpretation of maqāms, including material derived from the Iraqi maqām tradition as well as more recently created compositions.
—Adapted from notes by D. A. Sonneborn for When the Soul Is Settled: Music of Iraq (Smithsonian Folkways, 2006), www.folkways.si.edu.