Maqamat

[emily-mcintyre]

A recent post by Saul Zlatovsky on the Teaching forum intrigued me; when I realized I was hijacking the thread with my response I decided to start a new one here.

As I’m sure you know, maqamat is a term for pluralized ‘modes’ or specific relations between tones within South Asian music. I’ve been learning various maqamat for improvisation; maqam hijaz, for example, is a familiar “eastern-sounding” harmonic minor scale. I’m playing at a Pakistani wedding in a couple weeks and have had troubles turning up resources which were helpful for lever harp.

I would love to hear any thoughts or information about the subject in general; are there any western harpists on this forum who have become familiar with South Asian, or ‘Desi’ music? The only resources I’ve found are “A Near Eastern Primer” by Mimi Spencer and a book of many maqamat (lots of these, unfortunately, employ quarter tones).

Any resources anywhere? Anecdotes? Information?

Thanks!

[Author]

Posts