Bellydance Student Resources Blog - Farha

Professional Belly dancer in Syracuse, NY

Level 2: Instruments Semester: about bands

4/29/2020

This semester, we've worked on musical phrasing and learning to identify different instruments (You can try a little quiz to see which ones you remember and which it would be helpful to review soon, when I get the youtube video made ^_^). All of that comes together when a band or orchestra plays. So to cap off the semester, let's look at some different types of bands!

First up, a tahkt ensemble. This is a small group of musicians, and depending on context could be any combination of instruments, but generally will be traditional Arabic instruments. The first video is an example, playing a classic shaabi song. The second video, with Soaud Hosny in red, is from a movie where she is part of an Awalim family, and in this scene her family troupe is entertaining at a beledi wedding. Since at least the mid 1800s it has been the traditional way for Awalim to perform publicly that they would be on a stage with the band (possibly male members of their family, possibly musicians they had hired from cafes on Mohammed Ali street) playing cymbals and singing, and would get up to dance when moved to, or when the performance called for it. I included the clip as an example of that, but if you listen you'll notice the instruments you hear playing are not the ones on the stage in the clip, this is not uncommon in movies.

Level 2: Instruments Unit and About Maleya

4/22/2020

Instrument of the Week
This week's instrument is the accordion. Commonly found in beledi music, it is also used in oriental and other music for bellydancers. It was adapted from Western accordions by Egyptians to play the quarter tones used in Arabic music. It is also used in Rom music. It is nice to use squishy torso moves to go with the squishing instrument. I have also seem American dancers interpret it as a shimmy, but it never feels right to me, personally.

Level 2: Instruments and About Cane Pt3

4/13/2020

Instrument of the Week
This week, we worked with the mawaal, the vocal version of a takseem. It can mean doing vocal runs around lyrics, or just improvising singing on an abstract phrase like "ya leyl ya ainy". It can be found in formal or folk music. The clip of Adeweya his mawaal starts at about 2 minutes in.

Level 2: Instruments and About Cane pt 1

3/31/2020

Instrument of the Week
Violin is a soulful instrument, and the descendent of next week's instrument, the rhebaba. It is also called kaman, kemenja, kamanga, etc in Arabic. Sometimes Arabic musicians will play it upright, the way a rhebaba would be played.

You don't see much of the violinist in the 2nd clip, but at 2:55 the character Zou Zou (an Alma (singular of Awali,), there with her family troupe to entertain at the wedding, where it's expected they'll tease the bride and groom about the upcoming night) says "she's the kemenga (violin) and he's the oud, and together they'll make lovely music"

Level 2: Instruments Unit & About Sword

3/10/2020

Instrument of the Week
This week's instrument was the clarinet, more popular in Greek and Turkish than Egyptian/Arabic music, but a lovely instrument to dance to. Since I'm sure you all know what a clarinet looks like, here's a Greek dancer and a Turkish dancer performing to it, one dancing to a composed song and one to a takeem.

Level 2: Instruments Unit & About Fan Veil

3/3/2020

Instrument of the Week

One reason for going over individual instruments in class, and for practicing phrasing, and why I make y'all improvise, is that I want to, proverbially, teach you to fish, rather than giving a fish. When you learn to hear what the music is telling you to do you will be able to dance to any song you enjoy, and not have to depend on anyone else for choreography. Metaphorically, you can feed yourself, and have the option of expressing your own feeling through your dance, rather than having someone else put "words" in your mouth. I know it can be frustrating to work through these new skills, but I hope this encourages you and shows why it is worth it.

This week, we worked on another wind instrument, the mizmar. This instrument is associated with Upper Egypt (South of Cairo and north of Nubia, AKA the Saidi region). A family might all play the mizmar, with the oldest or most skilled getting to do the fancy notes, and the youngest or least skilled playing the drone. Mizmar is also played often with dancing horses, who are trained from a young age to get used to the sound (and volume) of the instrument. The horses are sometimes famous.

A similar sounding instrument, the mijwiz, is popular in Lebanese music (they might also use mizmar, mijwiz is more like a small arghul.)

bonus instrument 1: the mijwiz

Arghul, popular in Palestine, Egypt, and more

Level 2: Instruments Unit & About Shamadan

2/28/2020

Instrument of the Week

We worked on the Kanoon and talked about takeem (also spelled taqasim, taqsim, takseem, taxim, etc, etc). There is a structure to it, but that's pretty technical and for now you should just be aware that it is the musician following their feeling and displaying artistry. One interesting thing, it means "division" in Arabic, and something along the lines of "bridge/connection" in Turkish. It is often used to create a smooth transition from one song to another, especially if there is a maqam (mode/scale/key) change from one song to the next.

Here's an article about the middle Eastern music in general, which I'm wishing I'd sent earlier in the semester ^_^

On the topic of call and response, here's one of the songs we danced to, you can see the two types of bands (a "hassaballa" brass band, and a traditional "tet ensemble" being conducted by the lady with the flower) go back and forth

Level 2: Instruments Unit & About Wings

2/28/2020

Instrument of the Week

After practicing variations on our safety moves and doing simon says to improve movement recall, we worked on nai (aka ney) takeem. Part of the nafkh (blown instruments) family with a lovely sustained sound.

Level 2: Instruments Unit & About Tray

2/28/2020

Instrument of the Week

I wrote up a little thing about levels of musicality. This semester we're working on two parts of the most zoomed in level, as well as the 2nd most zoomed in. When we do choreographies we will use all of these skills to make sense of the choreo, hear the cues in the music and keep track of timing, and make it easier both to remember what part of the choreo we're at and to jump back in if we forget part of the choreography. They are also foundational skills that will help you to improvise and to write your own choreographies.

This week's instrument was the bouzuki, something you hear a lot in Greek music and almost not at all outside of it. As the second clip shows, you don't need to dance as fast as the bouzuki feels, you can fall back on the more mellow beat.

Level 2: Instruments Unit & About Veil

2/26/2020

Instrument of the Week
For anyone who didn't get this as an introductory student, here's my guide for picking out and getting used to finger cymbals.

And here is a link to my post about many of the instruments we'll be going over (plus a couple that didn't fit into the 11 week semester), so you can see each instrument being played . We're starting with the "plucked" family of instruments, and this week we worked with the warm tones of the oud.

Watching the musician play can give you ideas for how to dance to an instrument.

You can also hear how the sound of the oud impacts familiar songs