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Rast Analyses (p1)

Rast is, to my mind, the most important and central of the Arabic Maqamat. In Syria the motto is "If your night is going to be long, sing in Rast," because there are so many great and well-known songs in this maqam. Several of those songs are contained on this page, songs every arab musician of any experience must know, like Ghannili Shwayya, Ya Shadi il-Alhaan, and Ya Maal ish-Sham. And a maqam so well used is likely to have not only numerous very common pathways, but a large number of additional, alternate pathways--and even those are well known enough to occur in numerous instances. Rast is, in that sense, a "Big" maqam, with a large network of modulatory options, or to put it another way, a large vocabulary of Ajnas within its overall melody.

Below is the large list of ajnas incuded within Maqam Rast which are represented at least once on this page; compare that with the "pedagogical version" of the Maqam Rast network I developed as part of the Demo site in 2010. You will find that the principal ajnas - the ones which are most common - are the same, while the version presented on this page is much more complete, containing some of the rarer ajnas like Musta3aar and Sikah Beladi, which were left out of the earlier demo page.

01

(Aruh Li Meen)

02

(Aruh Li Meen)

03

(Aruh Li Meen)

10

(Aruh Li Meen)

39

(Aruh Li Meen)

40

(Aruh Li Meen)

51

(Aruh Li Meen)

10

(Ijma3 Shufna)

13

(Ijma3 Shufna)

16

(Ijma3 Shufna)

68

(Aruh Li Meen)

69

(Aruh Li Meen)

70

(Aruh Li Meen)

17

(Aruh Li Meen)

25

(Aruh Li Meen)

28

(Aruh Li Meen)

16

(Sihtu Wajdan)

17

(Sihtu Wajdan)


(Maqam Rast, Kirdan, Sazkar)

This first version of Maqam Rast, or, if you like, member of the Rast maqam family, is variously known, often simply as Rast, but also as "Maqam Kirdan" (referring to the note on which the melody starts, the octave above the root, a note which is known in the turkish naming system as "Kirdan"), or as "Maqam Sazkar" (the maqam name given to both "Ya Shadi il-Alhan" and "Sihtu Wajdan" in the collection Min Kunuuzina, despite it being known as "Rast" in other collections, such as Sabah Fakhri's majesterial recorded collection of Waslas known as Naghmat il-Ams), which refers to the raised second scale degree that occurs in some versions of these songs, including the Marie Jubran version of "Sihtu Wajdan" presented here.

The main defining ajnas of this version of Rast are: 2nd Rast 5/8, Nahawand 5, Hijaz 5, and Rast 1, presented in a descending order.

Ya Shadi il-Alhan

[song page with full recording]

01

02

03

melody dips below down to 3

04

05

06

07

melody variant reaches up to 11

08

09

10

11

12

Sihtu Wajdan

[song page with full recording]

01

melody extends to 9

02

03

04

Melodic emphasis on 3 (sikah)

05

06

2 instances of raised 2nd = "Sazkar"

07

repeat of first melody

08

09

10

melodic emphasis on 3

11

12

raised 2nd = "Sazkar"

13

real tonicization, unlike #5 & #11

14

Sikah with raised 2nd

15

16

other versions use Hijaz 5 (no raised 4)

17

other versions use Sikah 3

18

raised 6 to erase previous flat-6 of Hijaz

19

return to first melody

20

21

22

sikah emphasis

23

24

Sazkar with use of raised 2nd

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