Loading AI tools
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rhythms in Arabic music are rich and very diverse, as they cover a huge region and peoples from Northern Africa to Western Asia. Rhymes are mainly analysed by means of rhythmic units called awzan and iqa'at.
![]() | This article should specify the language of its non-English content, using {{lang}}, {{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and {{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code. Wikipedia's multilingual support templates may also be used. (April 2020) |
A rhythmic pattern or cycle in Arabic music is called a "wazn" (Arabic: وزن; plural أوزان / awzān), literally a "measure".[1]
A wazn is only used in musical genres with a fixed rhythmic-temporal organization including recurring measures, motifs, and meter or pulse.[2] It consists of two or more regularly recurring time segments, each time segment consisting of at least two beats (naqarāt, plural of naqrah). There are approximately one hundred different cycles used in the repertoire of Arabic music, many of them shared with other regional music, also found in some South European styles like Spanish music. They are recorded and remembered through onomatopoetic syllables and the written symbols O and I.[3] Wazn may be as large as 176 units of time.[4]
Iqa' (Arabic: إيقاع / īqā‘; plural إيقاعات / īqā‘āt) are rhythmic modes or patterns in Arabic music.[5][full citation needed] There are reputed to be over 100 iqa'at,[6][full citation needed] but many of them have fallen out of fashion and are rarely if ever used in performance. The greatest variety of iqa'at (ranging from two to 48 beats) are used in the muwashshah.