When studying the music within Asia, I decided that I wanted to dive deeper into the instruments that have been used. In many of the other blogs, I looked into instruments that were originated in whatever country I was studying. This time, I wanted to look into the instruments that were added with time. On a website called the Maqam World, you are able to look at and study different instruments used within Arabic music. Some of these instruments include pianos, keyboards, organs, and electrical guitars. Some of these instruments were played without being altered, though most were altered so that they could produce a good Maqam scale. A Maqam scale is described to be a melodic framework of scales and melodic phrases that can be built off of one another. I took interest in the saxophone, which apparently produces "good maqam scale intonation" without a lot of alteration, though never became mainstream the way that other instruments did. Samir Surour, who was in the Brass Band in the military of Egypt, became the pioneer of the Arabic Saxophone. Below is a video of Surour playing.

An instrument that I wanted to do more research on was the Qunan. I found two websites that went into more detail on the instrument. One article I read was a cool website called Zawaya, that said that the Qunan was a descendent of the Egyptian Harp and is the shape of a trapezoid shape. These instruments are usually played on a table, or the player's knees, and have around 81 strings. Underneath the strings are small brass levers that help in changing pitch and to create the scale of the maqam. According to Zawaya, the word Qunan means "law" in Arabic, as it is known to "lay down the law of pitch" for other people playing instruments around them.

According to the other website called Arab America, which says that the Qunan and other similar instruments were also used by Babylonians, Greeks, and Ancient Egyptians. Here, the website digs a little deeper into the origins of the name. It claims that the word was derived from the Greek word "kanon", which means the rule of law. The Qunan was popular for a lengthy amount of time, and then it started to evolve into other instruments like the psaltery. Below is a video of someone playing a song many of us know on the Qunan

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For the last thing I researched, I decided to look into more famous artists. One of them included a woman named Amal al-Atrash, who is an Egyptian singer also known as Asmahan. At a young age of three, Asmahan and her family immigrated to Egypt, as her mother hoped to keep her family safe from French forces that had been taking over. One day when a famous composer stayed over at her home, they overheard Asmahan sing and was amazed by her talent. He then suggested that she used the name Asmahan. After this, it did not take long for her to rise in her singing career. At the age of sixteen, she was invited by a record company to record her own album and her career kept rising from there. Later, she gave up her singing career after a marriage proposal, but eventually went back after having a family. Asmahad has had many ups and downs within her life, especially when it came to the combination of her marriage and singing career. Sadly, in 1944, she passed away in a tragic accident, where people believed that it was suspicious and that it was not an accident. There were so many incredible details of this amazing singer's life that I was not able to include, because if I did, we would all be here for hours. Though I do recommend reading more about this talented woman and her story.

Below is a video of Asmahan singing