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Arabian music

(Encyclopedia)Arabian music, classical musical tradition of the Islamic peoples of Arabia, the Fertile Crescent, and North Africa. Little is known of Arabian music before the Hegira (a.d. 622), but afterward unde...

Javanese music

(Encyclopedia)Javanese music, one of the richest and most distinctive of Asian musical cultures. It was and is of enormous importance in religious, political, and entertainment functions. It possesses two separate ...

music festivals

(Encyclopedia)music festivals, series of performances separate from the normal concert season and often, but not always, organized around an idea or theme. Music festivals usually are held annually in the summer, s...

music hall

(Encyclopedia)music hall. In England, the Licensing Act of 1737 confined the production of legitimate plays to the two royal theaters—Drury Lane and Covent Garden; the demands for entertainment of the rising lowe...

music video

(Encyclopedia)music video, videotaped performance of a recorded popular song, usually accompanied by dance or a fragmentary story and sometimes employing concert footage. Typically three to five minutes long, music...

passion music

(Encyclopedia)passion music, choral music whose text depicts events immediately surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus. The earliest passions, composed from the 9th to the 14th cent., were monophonic and employed the...

rock music

(Encyclopedia)rock music, type of music originating in the United States in the mid-1950s and increasingly popular throughout much of the world. A turning point in rock music occurred in the mid-1970s in the ...

Byzantine music

(Encyclopedia)Byzantine music, the music of the Byzantine Empire composed to Greek texts as ceremonial, festival, or church music. Long thought to be only a further development of ancient Greek music, Byzantine mus...

African music

(Encyclopedia)African music, the music of the indigenous peoples of Africa. Sub-Saharan African music has as its distinguishing feature a rhythmic complexity common to no other region. Polyrhythmic counterpoint, wh...

bluegrass music

(Encyclopedia)bluegrass music: see country and western music. ...