Muslim World Music Day is an online effort to identify and catalog all the recordings of Muslim music in the world. It will remain active as an online resource to make this culturally significant body of work readily available to people around the globe for study and enjoyment.
Read MoreThe ARChive presents:
a free, permanently available, online database of recordings and their locations around the world.
Highlights
The Jazz MessengersArchivist Fred Patterson talks about Art Blakey's band featuring Muslim musicians
Read
We recorded the sweet, toothless and energetic 73 year old singer Mohammed Wahib rehearsing "Slaima" at the Jordan Radio and Television Corp.
see the video
Photo 'Electric Dervish" donated by Robert Reeder. You can contribute recordings, data, URLs, info and make a contribution to keep this site up and running.
click to contributeEvents
Concert – Bassam Saba and the New York Arabic Orchestra
FREE - Tuesday April 12, 7:30 p.m. Schomburg Center. MUST RSVP. The Schomburg Center and Carnegie Hall's Neighborhood Concert Series present ney virtuoso and oud player Bassam Saba with a full orchestra
infoConcert – The UCSB Middle East Ensemble (MEE)
Noon - Tuesday April 12, at Moorpark College, Moorpark, CA. Scott Marcus and The University of California at Santa Barbara MEE will perform music and dance from different regions the Middle East.
infoFilm – Jazz Bridges Afghanistan
Noon - Tuesday April 12, at 319 Moore Hall, School of Pacific and Asian Studies (SPAS), University of Hawai'i Manoa. Exploring improvisation with American and Afghani musicians.
infoRadio – INTERZONERADIO
Tuesday Night, April 12, 6 - 8 PM KXUA 88.3 FM. Out of Arkansas, hosted by Dr. Ted Swedenburg, featuring favorites from the wide-world of Islamic Music. They're an hour ahead of NY and you can listen online.
infoRadio – Soundcheck
Tuesday April 12, around 11am, WNYC - 93.9 FM, NYC. John Schaefer plays an hour of live music from his archive for Muslim World Music Day. Last Friday we did a show with John and nay virtuoso Bassam Saba.
infoStudio-X Global Meme
The ARChive, GSAPP│Studio-X and Columbia Global Centers: Middle East played a game of musical telephone on April 12, 2011 through the Global Meme, a Muslim World Music Day collaborative project involving musicians in Amman, Mumbai and New York. Listen to the original song and Studio-X Mumbai interpretation via highlights to the left. The Studio-X New York interpretation and more details to come.
infoDance – Zatne Uste Balkan Brass Band at Barbes
Tuesday April 12, 9pm. NYC's best brass band makes you dance in cirles, with music richly drawn from Muslim Gypsy music.
infoRadio – Afropop Worldwide
We launched MWMD with our pals at Afropop Radio last Saturday, April 2, Public Radio WNYE, 91.5, New York, 11pm - you can listen online
infoConcert – Al-Andalus Ensemble
Saturday, April 9, 7:30pm Portland, Oregon. Performance by the Al-Andalus Ensemble.
infoConcerts + Culture – World Nomads Morocco Festival
April 30 - May 31. An important upcoming New York City event focusing on the music, culture and arts of Morocco, organized by the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF)
go to event
Recent Blog Post
From our youtube channel
ARC gathered over 2000 videos sorted by country - Music from Morocco now
Other Nice Stuff
Islamica – Smithsonian Folkways
has put together a special focused selection of their relevant releases just for us and for you.
E.I.A.R. – Radio Tripoli
is an essay on the broadcasting of traditional Libyan music in the 1930s by invaluable ARC volunteer and musicologist, Dr. Isabella Abbonizio.
Egyptian+Oklahoman – Kareem Salama
Pure country from one of our favorite new artists. We've loaded his videos on our youtube site, and A Land Called Paradise is a must see.
Ethiopics – Ethiopian Music
is a new blog by Dr. Ilaria Sartori, inspired by Muslim World Music Day, to explore all aspects of the music and culture.
MIM – Musical Instruments
The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, AZ, put together an illustrated web-hibition, Musical Instruments Across the Muslim World.
flatint – Abdullah Ibrahim
flatinternational is an elegant and scholarly site preserving audio graphic arts of South Africa. For MWMD they created an Abdullah Ibrahim archive, where you can view an amazing collection of record covers. And the discographies are among the best. Thanks to Siemon Allen.
Musical archeologist Karl Gert zur Heide offers The Orientalization of American Show Business - A Selective Timeline, a chronology exploring the impact of cultural traits from the orient on North American entertainment from the mid-19th century until the Great War. Published here for the first time. Illustration: Dancing to the sounds of her finger cymbals and gold-coins: Fatima as filmed by Edison in 1896.
Tasawwuf – Sufism
The above is Dr. Alan Godhas's resource page on Sufism and Sufi orders. More at Sufi.com
Taqasim – The Arab Contribution to Music of the Western World
sent to us by author Scott L. Marcus, Ethnomusicologist, University of California, Santa Barbara
Solo Improvisation in Arab Music
Dr. Rabah Saoud
Arabic Music Tapes – Library of Congress
The Library of Congress has directed us to a collection of relevant audio tapes in Arabic, collected by the Voice of America service. Go to to the Library's site - select Library Catalogs at the top, then search - VOA Arabic Music Tape - in Title. You will get 1244 hits/recordings. Diacritical marks and a million other quirks prevent us from entering this info into the database, or making it easier!
Islam Unexpected – hiphop, metal, hardcore, psyche, and …
Younger artists, within a tradition and with few inhibitions, are exploring, twisting and inventing ways of working : JorZine Arabian Metal webzine, Heavy Metal Islam book + site, Muslim HipHop blog, Turkish Psyche blog and Taqwacore Muslim punk film and info.
Talking Points – Arabic Lyrics Translation
Site to help you sing along, understand and research lyric content