The Maghreb — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya — together with Egypt and Mauritania. The region is the home of Algerian Raï (Cheb Khaled, Cheb Mami), Moroccan Gnawa trance music, and Chaâbi street song.
Most popular
Folk & WorldRaïAlgerian-Oranian popular music — protest, love and exile sung over synth bass, drum machines and electric oud since the 1970s.
Folk & WorldEgyptian Sha'abiCairo's working-class wedding music, brash and electrified, distinct from the elegant tarab classical-pop tradition.
Folk & WorldKabyle MusicAlgerian Berber song from Kabylia, blending acoustic guitar harmonies with non-Western melodic instincts.
Folk & WorldAlgerian ChaâbiAlgiers casbah music descended from Andalusi classical tradition, sung in colloquial Arabic over mandole, banjo and percussion.
Folk & WorldMoroccan ChaabiMoroccan urban popular music with shaabi meters, ornamental vocals, and wedding-night staying power.
Folk & WorldSaidi MusicUpper Egyptian wedding music — piercing mizmar oboes over thudding tabla baladi drums, also the soundtrack to tahteeb stick dance.
Folk & WorldMezouedTunisian working-class wedding music — the mezoued goatskin bagpipe over driving darbouka rhythms, long dismissed as low and now reclaimed.
SacredGnawaMoroccan trance music descended from sub-Saharan slavery — built on a three-string bass lute, iron castanets and an all-night ritual.
ClassicalTunisian MaloufTunisia's classical art music — the local descendant of the Andalusian tradition carried across the Mediterranean by exiled Muslims and Jews after 1492.
SacredHadraSufi gatherings across the Arab world built on collective dhikr, repeated invocations of God's names and trance as the goal.
