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gospel music

(Encyclopedia)gospel music, American religious musical form that owes much of its origin to the Christian conversion of West Africans enslaved in the American South. Gospel music partly evolved from the songs slave...

folk music

(Encyclopedia)folk music: see folk song.

Arabian music

(Encyclopedia)Arabian music, classical musical tradition of the Islamic peoples of Arabia, the Fertile Crescent, and North Africa. Little is known of Arabian music before the Hegira (a.d. 622), but afterward unde...

Japanese music

(Encyclopedia)Japanese music, the highly eclectic musical culture of the Japanese islands. Over the years, Japan has borrowed musical instruments, scales, and styles from many neighboring areas. The indigenous musi...

Javanese music

(Encyclopedia)Javanese music, one of the richest and most distinctive of Asian musical cultures. It was and is of enormous importance in religious, political, and entertainment functions. It possesses two separate ...

music festivals

(Encyclopedia)music festivals, series of performances separate from the normal concert season and often, but not always, organized around an idea or theme. Music festivals usually are held annually in the summer, s...

music hall

(Encyclopedia)music hall. In England, the Licensing Act of 1737 confined the production of legitimate plays to the two royal theaters—Drury Lane and Covent Garden; the demands for entertainment of the rising lowe...

music video

(Encyclopedia)music video, videotaped performance of a recorded popular song, usually accompanied by dance or a fragmentary story and sometimes employing concert footage. Typically three to five minutes long, music...

passion music

(Encyclopedia)passion music, choral music whose text depicts events immediately surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus. The earliest passions, composed from the 9th to the 14th cent., were monophonic and employed the...

Byzantine music

(Encyclopedia)Byzantine music, the music of the Byzantine Empire composed to Greek texts as ceremonial, festival, or church music. Long thought to be only a further development of ancient Greek music, Byzantine mus...