Middle East, Islamic Studies & Arabic Studies: Music

The Golhā ('Flowers of Persian Song and Music') comprise 1400 radio programs consisting of approximately 886 hours of programs broadcast over a period of 23 years - from 1956 through 1979.1 These programs are made up of literary commentary with the declamation of poetry, which is sung with musical accompaniment, interspersed with solo musical pieces. For the 23 years that these programs were broadcast, all the most eminent literary critics, famous radio announcers, singers, composers and musicians in Iran were invited to participate in them. The programs were not only exemplars of excellence in the sphere of music but highly ornate and refined examples of literary expression, making use of a repertoire of over two hundred classical and modern Persian poets, thus setting literary and musical standards that are still looked up to with admiration in Iran today and referred to as an encyclopedia of Persian music and poetry.

Classical and Traditional Music of Iraq. This educational, non-profit blog is exclusively dedicated to document and explain the ancient musical art of the Iraqi Maqam, and to preserve the memory and works of Iraq's most prominent maqam masters. The majority of the works published here have been obtained through collectors of old broadcast recordings or private concerts and are readily available on the Internet. If you believe that any content published or linked here infringes on your copyrights, please notify us immediately and it will be removed.

The site includes several audio-visual documents, including:
51,512 photographs, 1,124 portraits, 1,359 audio-visual and read speeches, 1,209 documentaries, in addition to the Nasser and Culture collection, which includes plastic and applied arts, songs of the revolution, poetry, and Nasser’s writings.

It includes a collection of Egyptian documents that encompass days of Nasser from the Egyptian Press, handwritten papers, the Central Committee for the Socialist Union sessions, the Revolutionary Command Council decrees, cards exchanged between family members, minutes of the Ministers Council sessions and some publications. It also includes a complete set of documents representing official correspondence between Egypt and each of Great Britain and the USA.

The Sirat Bani Hilal Digital Archive is designed as an open access resource for the preservation and dissemination of audio recordings, written texts, photographic images and other materials related to the “Epic of the Bani Hilal tribe” (Arabic: Sīrat Banī Hilāl سيرة بني هلال ). The site is dedicated to the epic singers of al-Bakātūsh (Egypt) for their willingness to share their knowledge and performances of this thousand-year-old epic poem.