Arabesque or Arabesk (Turkish: Arabesk) is a genre termed so by Turkish musicologists for Arabic-style music created in Turkey. The genre was particularly popular in Turkey in the decades from the 1960s through 1990s. As with Arabic music itself, its aesthetics have evolved over the decades. Although melodies and rhythms are predominantly Arabic-pop influenced, it also draws ideas from other aspects of Middle Eastern music including Bağlama music...
more
Arabesque or Arabesk (Turkish: Arabesk) is a genre termed so by Turkish musicologists for Arabic-style music created in Turkey. The genre was particularly popular in Turkey in the decades from the 1960s through 1990s. As with Arabic music itself, its aesthetics have evolved over the decades. Although melodies and rhythms are predominantly Arabic-pop influenced, it also draws ideas from other aspects of Middle Eastern music including Bağlama music, Turkish forms of oriental dance and Ottoman classical music. It continues to be played within Turkey in its purer form today, but its popularity has waned with younger people in more recent times; and it has tended to merge into, and be subsumed by, other genres such as latter-day Western dance music and Turkish pop music.
A very small percentage of Arabesk is exclusively instrumental. For the great majority of it, a singer lies at the center of the music. Male singers dominated the genre in its early years, but female singers probably...
less
