Rebab
In Algeria, as throughout the Maghreb, we continue to call Arab musical art Andalusian music, in preference to a decisive stage of its evolution.
It is the heritage of a long tradition which, from Baghdad to Cordoba, from Cordoba to Granada, then from Granada to Tlemcen, Algiers, Bougie, Constantine, has found itself so perfectly assimilated, individualized, personalized since the tragic ebb of the Muslims of Spain.
This music appears, without doubt, as the national music, the classical music of Algeria.
The most glorious of his instruments is the lute. We can also cite the rebab and the kuitra.
Of Hispano-Moorish origin, the rebab, a bowed and two-stringed instrument, is made up of a cedar or walnut box made up of a single piece of very elongated ovoid shape.
The upper part of the box is covered with a very thin copper blade on which three or four rosettes have been pierced.
The edges as well as the sides are trimmed with mother-of-pearl.
Dethroned by the violin for around two centuries, the rebab is now tending to disappear.
It is played in Tlemcen and very rarely in Algiers.
It is the heritage of a long tradition which, from Baghdad to Cordoba, from Cordoba to Granada, then from Granada to Tlemcen, Algiers, Bougie, Constantine, has found itself so perfectly assimilated, individualized, personalized since the tragic ebb of the Muslims of Spain.
This music appears, without doubt, as the national music, the classical music of Algeria.
The most glorious of his instruments is the lute. We can also cite the rebab and the kuitra.
Of Hispano-Moorish origin, the rebab, a bowed and two-stringed instrument, is made up of a cedar or walnut box made up of a single piece of very elongated ovoid shape.
The upper part of the box is covered with a very thin copper blade on which three or four rosettes have been pierced.
The edges as well as the sides are trimmed with mother-of-pearl.
Dethroned by the violin for around two centuries, the rebab is now tending to disappear.
It is played in Tlemcen and very rarely in Algiers.