Ten Hispano-Arabic Strophic Songs in the Modern Oral Tradition

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Ten Hispano-Arabic Strophic Songs in the Modern Oral Tradition is written by Benjamin M. Liu and published by Univ of California Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 0520097513 (ISBN 10) and 9780520097513 (ISBN 13).

This work explores the literary and musical connections between Hispano-Arabic strophic songs of the muwashshaha-zajal genre, and their medieval Romance cognates, the ballata, cantiga, dansa, rondeau, villancico, and virelai. The authors begin with a general essay based on recent scholarship in Arabic, Romance, and ethnomusicological studies and then present a translation of Al-Tifashi's key 13th-century Arabic treatise on the musical tradition of Arab Spain. The appendices provide texts and translations of ten poems that modern scholarship attributes to or authenticates as part of the Hispano-Arabic song repertory, and musical notations of these texts as sung in Arab countries today. The authors suggest that the living tradition of Andalusian music surviving in the Arab world preserves a priceless echo, be it ever so distorted, of the lost tradition of Hispano-Arabic songs. They conclude that this tradition was a subtle blending of imported Oriental elements combined with others native to the Romance-singing Iberian Peninsula.