yair dalal

Today Yair Dalal, an Israeli musician of Iraqi Jewish descent, played at Kibbutz Ein Dor for the workshoppers/shnatties as a part of Boneh. It is pretty amazing that he came to play just for us. He plays traditional Iraqi music on an ancient instrument called an "oud," which he described as the grandmother of the guitar.

One thing he said that stood out to me is that western singers like to be backed up by chords when they sing, whereas middle eastern singers like to be backed up by an instrument playing the melody. He attributed this to the absence of harmony in traditional middle eastern music and the fact that the scale used is something between the classically defined major scale and minor scale.