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Homework for week eight

Topic: Middle Eastern Musical Structure: Rhythms

Every good belly dancer must understand her Middle Eastern Rhythms and know how to dance to them. I break down an understanding of rhythms into two categories: 1) musical and 2) cultural. If you are interpreting a rhythm musically, you will interpret its various dums, teks and silences with your body. If you are interpreting a rhythm culturally, you will find out what region and people the rhythm is from, what it is used for and what dances steps and movements are associated with it.

Select a rhythm, listen to it and learn it’s name. Pay attention to how many beats it takes up, for example it could be 2 beats, 4 beats, 8 beats, 9 beats. Count the beats as the rhythm completes itself. Pay attention to which numbers the dums and the strongest accented teks land on. You may have to count 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &, because sometimes they land on the &. Once you understand the counts, clap or speak the rhythm to yourself. Then play the rhythm using your hip, chest or shoulder like we did in class. Feel free to experiment with different ways of playing the rhythm in your body, utilizing different parts of your body or mixing parts (like dums on hips teks on shoulders for example).

Take the same beat and find out where it is from or in what kind of music it is used most often. You might already know, or you might need to ask somebody or look for information online. Find out if it is associated with a particular ethnic or folkloric dance. See if you can find footage of that dance and watch how the performers use the rhythm in their own unique cultural way. See if you can pick up some steps. Be ready to name your rhythm and present a step next week in class.

The examples used in class:

  • Ayyub – musically it is a 2 beat rhythm. Here is the musical breakdown:
    1-+-2-+-|  D--kD-T-|

    Culturally ayyub is associated with the zar and sufi ritual religious practice in Egypt. Here are a few ethnic and folkloric exmaples of the zar ritual. When played slowly it is said to be the closest rhythm to our heartbeat. When sped up it is also used in some Egyptian Oriental entrances, drum solos and finales, like a malfuf. I’ll keep my eyes open for good zar references in Oriental routnines to post some clips of.

  • Malfuf – musically this is another 2 beat rhythm. Here is the musical breakdown:
    1-+-2-+-|  D--T--T-|

    Culturally malfuf is associated with Egyptian Oriental entrances, drum solos and finales. I don’t have a malfuf specific playlist, but feel free to puruse my Oriental entrances playlist and see if you can identify this rhythm is some of the clips. This clip of Mona does use malfuf as she first enters.

  • Karsilama – musically it is a 9 beat rhythm. Here is the musical breakdown:
    1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-|  D-__T-__D-__T-T-t-|

    Culturally karsilama is associated with Turkish Rroman (aka gypsy) dances. Here is my Turkish Rroman youtube playlist.

If you do not already own good rhythm CDs to help you in your dance study, I reccommend picking one or more educational recordings up. Here are some of my recommendations:


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