Andalusian classical music (Arabic: طرب أندلسي, trans. mousiqua al-âla, Spanish: música andalusí) is a style of Moorish music found across North Africa in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. It originates out of the music of Al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia) between the 9th and 15th centuries.
In Morocco this music is now part of the traditions of the country, with styles called (Al-Âla) and Gharnati. It is considered very spiritual and soft and is usually played in ceremonies, particularly marriages, but also in popular places such as cafeterias, restaurants and houses. Moroccans celebrate with this music in independence days and Islamic Eids. One can find some musical teaching in schools in Fes, Essaouira, Rabat, Tetouan. It is considered like a cultural reflect of Morocco beside other styles. It somehow near associated with Algeria, San'a, and al-Maalûf) Tunisia, and Libya (al-Maalûf).
The al-Maalûf is a type of Andalusian music with some influence from the Ottoman music and the Berber Chawi music of the region of Constantine. It exists in the east of Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.
The popular Chaabi music developed in the Casbah of Algiers derived from the classical expression of Andalusian music.
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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, 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 derived 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) (especially Morocco).
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" on the musical traditions in Jewish societies of North Africa, Haïm Zafani writes: "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 ...."
The author also discusses a number of rare books related to Andalusian music, including a directory of Andalusian music written in 1786 by Al Haik (of Tetouan, Morocco), and a rare repertoire of songs of Granada and Cordoba printed in 1886/1887.[1]
If the term Gharnati refers in the region of Tlemcen to the entire directory of Andalusian scholars, 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 and Mohammed Habib Samrakandi in their book Music of Algeria.[2]
The North African cities have in particular inherited the Andalusian musical style of Granada, as mentioned in the book The Literature of Al-Andalus.[3]
The Nuba of Morocco have been identified in the eighteenth century by the musician Al Haïk from Tetouan.[4]
A suite form called the Andalusi nubah forms the basis of al-âla. Though it has roots in Andalusia, the modern nûba is probably a North African creation. Each nuba is dominated by one musical mode. It is said that there used to be twenty-four nuba linked to each hour of the day, but in Algeria there are only sixteen nuba and in Morocco eleven have survived, which together include 25 "Andalusian" modes. Each nuba is divided into five parts called mîzân, each with a corresponding rhythm. The rhythms occur in the following order in a complete nuba:
An entire nuba can last six or seven hours, though this is rarely done today. Rather, in Morocco, often only one mîzân from any given nuba is performed at a time. Each mîzân begins with instrumental preludes called either tûshiya, m'shaliya, or bughya, followed by as many as twenty songs (sana'i) in the entire mîzân.
Andalusian classical music orchestras are spread across Maghreb, including the cities of:
They use instruments including oud (lute), rabab (rebec), darbouka (goblet drums), taarija (tambourine), qanún (zither), and kamancheh. More recently, other instruments have been added to the ensemble, including piano, contrabass, cello, and even banjos, saxophones, and clarinets, though these are rare.
Andalusia was probably the main route of transmission of a number of Near-Eastern musical instruments used in classical music: the rebec (ancestor of the violin) from the rebab, the guitar from the qitara, and the naker from the naqareh. Further terms fell into disuse in Europe: adufe from al-duff, alboka from al-buq, anafil from al-nafir, exabeba from al-shabbaba (flute), atabal (bass drum) from al-tabl, atambal from al-tinbal,[5] the balaban, sonajas de azófar from sunuj al-sufr, the conical bore wind instruments,[6] the xelami from the sulami or fistula (flute or musical pipe),[7] the shawm and dulzaina from the reed instruments zamr and al-zurna,[8] the gaita from the rhaita, rackett from iraqya or iraqiyya,[9] geige (German for violin) from ghichak,[10] and the theorbo from the tarab.[11]
According to historic sources, William VIII brought to Poitiers hundreds of Muslim prisoners.[12] Trend[13] acknowledges that the troubadors derived their sense of form and the subject matter of their poetry from Andalusia. The hypothesis that the troubador tradition was created, more or less, by William after his experience of Moorish arts while fighting with the Reconquista in Spain was also championed by Ramón Menéndez Pidal in the early twentieth-century, but its origins go back to the Cinquecento and Giammaria Barbieri (died 1575) and Juan Andrés (died 1822). Meg Bogin, English translator of the female troubadors, also held this hypothesis.[14] Certainly "a body of song of comparable intensity, profanity and eroticism [existed] in Arabic from the second half of the 9th century onwards."[15]