On Friday, March 23 I attended Aziza!—a Middle Eastern ensemble concert. The event was held in Opperman Music Hall on Florida State University’s campus. The performance attracted a small crowd; the number of people in attendance occupied only a fourth of the available seating. The majority of the audience was made up of mostly middle and older aged people, with only a handful of students and young adults there. However, they all looked as though they were enjoying themselves. Everyone remained especially still and quiet throughout the duration of the performance, applauding only at the end of each piece when it was appropriate to do so. The only exception to this was made on behalf of the performers request for a few volunteers from the crowd to join the group on stage.
The second concert I attended was much less formal. I went to Downtown Community Church’s (DCC) worship night on Sunday, February 25. The event was held at the church located on E. Palmer Avenue in Tallahassee, Florida. What is unique about this location is that the building is actually an old warehouse. There are no pews and no alter as you would find in most traditional churches. Instead…show more content… primarily performed Arabic-styled music of the Middle Eastern musical genre. Of the ten pieces they performed, only two explored non-Arabic music; one was Turkish, and one was Algerian. The opening piece, ‘Aziza, was composed by Mohamed Abd al-Wahab, an esteemed 20th century Egyptian composer, talked about in our textbook. The tune employed the rhythms of traditional Egyptian folk music, which is associated with the areas traditional form of women’s dance, belly dancing. Accordingly, it follows one of the two main folk dance rhythms: fallahi. Fallahi was adopted by Egyptian farmers specifically out of the areas interest in folkloric dance. It is characterized by a quick and repetitive tempo, in a 2-beat (duple) meter. The percussionist on stage kept this rhythm, stroking the drum to the following
