Jazz improvisation, syncopated beats and counter-culture attitudes have been swinging in the Arab world since the early twentieth century. This Rough Guide explores today’s thriving scene, revealing how blending jazz and Arabic music has created the most beautiful of musical concoctions.

For more information, visit www.worldmusic.net/arabicjazz

The Rough Guide To Arabic Jazz
This Rough Guide travels the Arab world exploring the depth and range of jazz interpretations heard across the region’s many nations and cultures. 

Lebanon’s rich musical melting pot is to thank for many of the tracks on this album. Haunting track ‘Harrama el-Nawma’ is by Rima Khcheich, a singer from Khiam in the south of the country. Lebanese trumpeter and composer Ibrahim Malouf’s ‘Nomade Slang’ is anchored by an undulating double-time drum pattern with sharp stinging horn lines and inquisitive rising bass figures. Another Beirut-born musician, Rabi Abou-Khalil, contributes the track ‘A Better Tomorrow’ with his masterful oud bringing out a slinky, seductive flavour with brushed drums and a languorous wind solo. ‘Masâr’ by Le Trio Jourban also spotlights the iridescent delicacy of the stringed oud. 

Ahmad Kaabour is also from Lebanon and a prominent cultural figure in the Middle East: his 1975 hit ‘Oundaikom’ became the anthem of the Palestinian struggle. ‘Abou Afif’ was released in 2012 and is a peppy, almost saccharine number that encapsulates the feel of modernist 1970s jazz. 

Daramad count in the proceedings with the track ‘Tigris Eye’. The band’s line-up features a mix of Persian and Australian musicians allowing them to create a delicate musical dialogue. 

Karim Ziad is an Algerian jazz percussionist, guitarist and gumbri (Moroccan bass lute) player. Omar Faruk Tekbilek was born of Turkish and Egyptian parents and currently resides in America. ‘Dark Eyes’ is inspired by Sufi devotional music and ambient electronica. Maurice El Medioni stirs a potent punch with Cuban percussionist Roberto Rodriguez on closing track ‘Ana Ouna’.

Jazz is still pulsing through the veins of Arabic homelands and this Rough Guide offers up an insight in to the scene. 


Hijaz: Chemsi (taken from the album The Rough Guide To Arabic Jazz)

tuncay korkmaz - menekşenin aşkı

Classical music for day dreaming and other fun pursuits!

Track 5 Nocturne of a Broken Hour Cello Sonata Intro

(Tugay Güler is a composer and songwriter officially a member of the US-based BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.). His works are registered with BMI, which oversees and controls copyrights worldwide.) 

“Throughout our lives, we sweat and save for a shallow grave. But I never lived confined within walls. If life consists of borders, then not crossing them is my real grave.”
 — Tugay GÜLER 

Tugay Güler is a poet, lyricist, and composer who pushes boundaries with the lyrics and compositions born from his poetry. 

With his unique style, he transforms deep emotions into powerful and soul-touching melodies. 

He is much more than an ordinary person. 

In addition to composing all kinds of music with his Turkish and English poems, he also reaches people's souls with his resonant modern symphonies. His stories express silence, resistance, and emotion. 

Every word, every note, every breath carries profound meaning. 

🎶 Works created with love, performed freely, and resonating beyond borders.


(9) THE REST IS A LIE Deep longing No.1 Op.8 (La minor - Am)

Crillon Compositions is a deeply personal orchestral suite, born from a journey that began with musical sketches and youthful piano doodles at age 19 at the famed Hôtel de Crillon , and culminating in a sweeping symphonic vision as the composer clebrated his 35th birthday at the Crillon. These newly revised and recorded works honor the enduring influence of French classical tradition—Debussy & Ravel—infused with the modern emotional landscapes of the grandeur of Rachmaninov. From brooding chamber pieces to cinematic overtures, the album embodies the conflict and beauty of legacy, identity, and time beneath the marbled hush of a Parisian palace.

Track 16 Debussy Détour Sept

Melody-driven duet for cello and piano.

Composed, arranged, recorded and produced by Mark Taylor (Chameleon Music)

Silence & Tears: 17 Musical Short Stories

Ysabel's Lament

The Beach Huts

Unsettled Minds is a sweeping collection of orchestral adaptations that transform Beethoven’s Appassionata themes and beyond into symphonic meditations for restless souls. Each movement embraces turbulence and tenderness: brooding strings hover on the edge of silence, woodwinds whisper with searching fragility, and brass resound with fateful grandeur. Expanding Beethoven’s architecture into Rachmaninoff-like romantic musings of lush textures and cinematic dramas that capture the beauty and unease of an unsettled mind — where moments of stillness are broken by storms of emotion, and melodies carry both torment and transcendence. 

Performed in the imagined voice of Europe’s greatest orchestras, this album is an invitation into a dream state where longing, unrest, and fragile nobility collide.

Track 5 Nocturne of a Broken Hour Cello Sonata Intro

Divine Imagination Radio