Month: June 2025

‘From Ocean to Gulf: Heritage Music of the Arab World’ is a series by Ahram Online, in partnership with the AMAR Foundation (Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research). In this article, we explore the rich music legacy of Yemen.

‘From Ocean to Gulf: Heritage Music of the Arab World’ is a series by Ahram Online, in partnership with the AMAR Foundation (Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research).

In this article, we explore Yemen’s rich music legacy.

After featuring the Sultana of Tarab Music, the Prince of Arabic Violin, the Master of Buzuq, Hajja Zeinab El Mansouria, the rich music of  Happy Yemen (8th Century BC-19th Century AD), we proudly present to you the rich music of Happy Yemen in the 20th Century.

Music is a powerful force for healing and reconnecting us with our roots and shared humanity in a world of numerous challenges.

‘From Ocean to Gulf: Heritage Music of the Arab World’ is a new series by Ahram Online, in partnership with the AMAR Foundation (Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research). Focusing on the early years of recording in our region, which reflected a modern cosmopolitan repertoire and coincided with the Renaissance era that flourished in Egypt between the mid-19th Century and the 30s of the twentieth Century, this initiative aims to introduce our audience to the iconic figures of Arab music whose contributions have enriched our intangible cultural heritage and inspired generations worldwide.

Yemen, a country on the Arabian Peninsula, is one of the world’s most beautiful and historically rich nations.

Often referred to as Al-Yaman al-Sa‘īd (Happy Yemen), it has long served as a centre of discovery for travellers and a research subject for historians, social scientists, natural scientists, and others.

In the second episode on Yemen, we highlight the music scene from the beginning of the 20th Century to the present. 

Music in 20th Century Yemen 

The beginning of the 20th Century was difficult in Yemen because of the wars between the Zaydī imams and the Ottoman occupiers. During these wars, the artists swung between the Ottoman authority, which encouraged music, and the Zaydīn, who did not.

Thus, their social, religious, and political position was difficult, as described in the biography of Sa‘d ‘Abd al-Lāh, who, as an artist, was accused by Aden’s jurists and fundamentalists of contravening the religious system of drinking alcohol.

His ‘ūd playing was also subject to accusation. A beautiful legend tells how he faced these accusations and how, thanks to his art and his mastery of religious qaṣīda, he regained the respect of the imam by performing religious qaṣīda and even some religious prayers accompanied by the ‘ūd.

This allowed him to resume his art under the rule of Imam YaḥyaḤamīd al-Dīn. Yet his position remained complicated, and fundamentalists probably killed him in the early 20th Century. We do not have any recordings of him, but some of his numerous students do. Some remained in Sanaa and practised the art of singing.

Music scene in Aden 

In contrast, others travelled to Aden, which was under English rule, including famous ‘Alī al-‘Aṭṭāb and MuḥammadẒāfir, who fled from the fundamentalist Zaydī rule and moved to Aden in their early 20s.

In the southern provinces, a vibrant group of artists emerged during the British occupation of Aden (1839 – 1967), with singing and music becoming widespread among Yemeni artists. Professor Muhammad Murshid Naji noted that Lahji singing before the era of Ahmed Fadhl al-Qumindan was influenced by the Sana’ani style. Lahji singers would perform Sana’ani songs, and the singer Hadi Sabit al-Nubi developed his oud-playing by drawing on the techniques of a northern artist whose name remains unrecorded.

Naji attributes the emergence of the first Lahji melody to the poet, composer, and singer Fadhl Mater, who was credited with inventing the initial melody set to the Lahji rhythm. This innovation led Hadi Sabit to sing in the Sana’ani style over one of Al-Qumandan’s poems. It is worth noting that instrumental music is not widespread in Yemen, where it exists under one form whose origin is said to be Turkish, called firtāsh: it is a muwaqqa section, yet it allows variation and improvisation by the artist.

Sanaa singing was divided into two parts: a part in Aden and a part in Sanaa, and the Aden part is the one we have recordings of. Their recordings date back to the late 30s, while those made in Sanaa started later than the 50s. The first recording made in Sanaa in Historical Yemen was made by German orientalist and music expert Hans Helfritz who visited Yemen in the late 1920s and early 1930s to study Yemeni Music in this fundamentalist religious atmosphere, which aroused the suspicion and caution of the pious and religious in particular, and he was accused of being a spy.

Upon the First World War outbreak, the German Odeon Records company had to stop its commercial and recording activities as Yemen was under English occupation. Local record companies started right away, including the major “Aden Crown Company” that took over from Odeon and resumed recording Sheikh ‘AlīAbū Bakr Bāsharāḥīl, as well as Sheikh Ṣalāḥ ‘Abd al-lāh al-‘Antarī and Sheikh Muḥammad al-Mās, who died in the 1950s. They had recorded with the Aden Crown Company in the 1940s.

Listen here to Ṣāliḥ ‘Abd al-Lāh al-‘Antarī performing qaṣīda “Riḍāk khayr min al-duniā wa-mā fī-hā” accompanied by the big ‘ūd as he did not play the qanbūs from the archives of Dr Jean Lambert.

Indian influences 

In the 1920s and 1930s, Indian musical influences became prominent as numerous musical and theatre groups and films were introduced in Aden and Hadhramaut, which had long been under the administration of the British Viceroy of India. By the 1940s and 1950s, Yemeni musicians had adapted these influences to create an “Arabized” Indian style, in which tunes from Indian films were reinterpreted with texts set in classical Arabic rather than colloquial language.

The acclaimed artist Muhammad Juma Khan, known for his mastery of the Hadhrami style, became one of the foremost practitioners of this hybrid form. The distinctive features of Adeni singing developed during the twentieth Century due to the convergence of multiple Yemeni and foreign musical elements, especially from India. Though a large portion of Aden’s pre-independence population was of Indian origin, the evolution of Adeni song was notably influenced by Egyptian melodies, and some musicians even incorporated Western rhythms such as the waltz.

Yemen Radio 

Imam YaḥyaḤamīd al-Dīn, who feared openness and foreign interference, forced the Turkish Ottomans out and defended the independence of Yemen, yet within conservative and fundamentalist restrictions. As a consequence, the Yemeni Radio was only launched in 1955. It was a reaction to the launching of the Ṣawt al-‘Arab Radio, which had started broadcasting from Cairo, notably liberalist political ideas. Imam Aḥmad, the son of Imam YaḥyaḤamīd al-Dīn, who took his reign in 1948, consulted with theologians who refused the launching of the Radio. Still, the Radio was launched, and only news was broadcast at first.

They also recorded Qāsim al-Akhṭash, a Yemeni artist in Sanaa. He recorded using reels that existed then, allowing a longer recording duration. Yet recordings were made in Aden before Sanaa Radio’s recordings. They were commercial recordings of Sheikh ‘AlīAbū Bakr Bāsharāḥīl made in the late 1930s, in 1939, by the Odeon.

Singing post 1962 Revolution 

After the 1962 revolution, Sanaa singing prospered, yet without the qanbūs or ṭarab, but with the kabanj’ūd played by talented artists such as MuḥammadḤamūd al-Ḥārithī, Aḥmad al-Snaydār, and ‘Alī al-Ānisi among others who became famous and served the Sanaa song with the big ‘ūd and a style inspired a little from Egypt and Syria, while preserving the main form or style.

On the other hand, some other artists did not become famous in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. They are: Ḥasan al-‘Ajamī, Yaḥya al-Nūnū, ṣaḥn player Muḥammad al-Khamīsī, as well as Muḥammad ‘Ushaysh, and they all preserved the old style and preserved the ṭarab as well and revived the old style and methods, considering that many elements, such as the firtāsh and the muṭawwal, had been neglected by the other artists. They continued to play the ṭarab and the ṣaḥn.

Women singers in the public domain 

This period also witnessed the rise of women singers. Traditionally, singing was by men, and emerging women performers challenged dominant societal norms. Among these names is Nabat Ahmed (b. 1955), who has appeared in the Yemeni music scene since the early 1970s. Other names presented in the recently published book entitled “Women’s Lyrical Voices in Yemen 1950-2000” by researcher Yahya Qassem Sahel include: Raja’ Basudan, Nabiha Azim, Mona Ali, Taqiya Al Taweelah, Fatima Bahdela and Fatima Mansour Al-Shatri (Habbaniyah).

The rise of the tape cassette 

The tape cassette became a dominant and accessible music dissemination format in the 1970s. It also helped a wider circulation of songs within and outside Yemen—the evolution of music in Yemen in the 20th Century and the advent of recording somewhat settled things. Today, we know that, for example, a certain qaṣīda was sung to a particular melody by a specific artist in 1940, recorded by Odeon on a specific date. Still, we do not know how it was before the recording era. This is an essential characteristic of the oral heritage: it is not fixed and settled when transmitted from generation to generation. The sea flows from generation to generation with all its forms, types and variations.

ūd vs Qumbus 

The ‘ūd was not used in Yemen before Islam, yet there are indications of its existence there after Islam. Additionally, vocal forms such as the Sanaa singing, including ḥumaynī poetry, are a form of classical poetry influenced by the local colloquial language. It has existed in Yemen since the Medieval period (Middle Ages), i.e. at least since the 12th Century or the 13th Century during or after the Ayyubid dynasty.

The ‘ūd used in Yemen until the beginning of the 20th Century was strangely not the ‘ūdkumaythrī known in the Arab culture since the drawings of Al-Ḥarīrī’s maqāmāt, or even the drawings of the Alhambra showing the ‘ūd with wooden cover. Instead, the Yemeni ‘ūd called ṭarab in Sanaa has a unique pre-Abbasid body covered with goatskin or sheepskin that produces a distinctive sound, maybe softer, that is difficult to describe, yet undeniably distinctive. It is thinner and smaller, and thus can be played standing up, which is very practical to accompany dancing.

Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ṭaḥḥān describes the ‘ūd in “Ḥāwī al-funūnwa-salwat al-maḥzūn” that dates back probably to the first half of the eleventh Century and is considered one of the most important and oldest references about ‘ūd making. He mentioned the ‘ūd that existed before his era, described it as having an animal skin cover, and detailed the contemporary ‘ūd with a wooden cover. Before that, he talked about the ‘ūd with the animal skin cover and called this ‘ūd “barbaṭ”. The name barbaṭ is derived from Persian and Arabic: “bar” means chest in Persian, and “baṭt” means duck in Arabic. Indeed, the shape of this ‘ūd from head to body resembles the shape of a duck’s chest.

Thus, the ‘ūd that reached the Arabian Peninsula and the Ḥijāz coming from Persia during the early Islamic era and the Umayyad era is the same that reached Yemen, settled there, and kept its shape with all the changes that affected the ‘ūd later on in the Arab Levant.

We do not know when it reached Yemen, yet there are indications that it existed there in the 13th Century along with the ‘ūdkumaythrī. So, both co-existed in the same place during the same periods, in Yemen but also in other regions of the Arab World, such as Andalusia and Morocco, where it still exists under a different shape, the rabāba played with a bow, whose shape is very similar to the ṭarab instrument, also called qanbūs in Yemen, a name probably derived from Turkish, since in the History of Turkish Music there is an instrument called kūbūz that probably was Arabized into qabūs then qanbūs.

Most theories in books on Arab music and the Arabic musical system until a late period presented the ‘ūd as the instrument onto which the theory could be applied. This also applies to Yemen. The Yemeni ‘ūd, i.e. the ṭarab or qanbūs, has four strings, unlike the oriental ‘ūd, which was known in the 20th Century and has five strings.

The four strings are similar to those of the oriental ‘ūd except for the fifth string, i.e. the first, the second, and the third strings are Do, Sol, Re, which is from the jawāb to the qarār. The qarār is the fourth string, but it is tuned to Do, not to La like the big ‘ūd. It is the jawāb of the first string. The three strings are double strings, and the upper is single. Considering these four strings, the Do can be a qarār to the rāstmaqām, and the third string can be a qarār to the bayyātīmaqām, and the third one, plucked, would be a Mi / sikāh.

The strings of the Yemeni ‘ūd have names: the first one is the ḥādhiq (energetic); the second one is the awsaṭ (as it is approximately in the middle), and the rakhīm. The beautiful  name rakhīm came from some qaṣīda that tells about the ṣawtrakhīm (melodious voice) of the birds or the ‘ūd. The fourth string is called jarr or yatīm (orphan). The yatīm may be because it is a single string.

Jean Lambert – pioneer ethnomusicologist 

Jean Lambert is a research professor in anthropology and musicology who has dedicated his life to the study, preservation, and dissemination of Yemeni music. He has been associated with the Musée de l’Homme in Paris since 1991 and is the director of the French Centre for Archaeology and Social Sciences in Sanaa (Yemen). Lambert was also the Director of the Centre for Research in Ethnomusicology (CREM-LESC, UMR 7186), CNRS, Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre.

Listen here to Jean Lambert playing Yemeni ud

Focusing on the Arab world, particularly in Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula and Lebanon, Jean Lambert’s works explore the relationships between local musical practices and global meanings of Arab-Islamic culture: performance context, ritual practices, mythological representations, and the formation of contemporary identities. His current research focuses on zajal in Lebanon and the 1932 Music Conference in Cairo. Dr Lambert has published several books, more than forty scientific articles, and thirty CDs of traditional music from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq and North Africa. He is also a consulting and management board member of AMAR.

Lambert published his book “Ṭubb al-nufūsfī al-ghinā’ al-Ṣan‘ānīfī al-mujtama‘ al-Yamanī” (“The Medicine of the Soul: Music and Musicians among Urban Dwellers in Sanaa (Republic of Yemen)”) in 1997. He invited several artists to France to record CDs at the Institut du Monde Arabe and French Radio, among others. In his lifelong mission to archive/document the endangered Yemeni heritage, he collaborated with UNESCO in 2000 to inscribe the Sanaa heritage on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. He worked on supporting this art through a project that lasted from 2006 to 2009.

For More on Yemeni music, tune in to AMAR Podcasts:

112 – Music in Yemen 1

113 – Music in Yemen 2

114 – Music in Yemen 3

115 – Recordings in Yemen 1

116 – Recordings in Yemen 2

source/content: english.ahram.org.eg (headline edited)

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YEMEN