Welcome, friends, to a particularly fascinating season of All Around This World online classes for kids. Over the next several months we’re going to explore the Middle East and West Asia, enjoying so many musics and cultures from around the region. There is not one unified “West Asian” or “Middle Eastern” music, but rather a constellation of different musics from the region that overlap in structure, tone and rhythm, from ancient Persian Sufi music and Arabic classical music, to more modern styles like the Turkish, Arab-influenced “Arabesque” and Egypt’s “generational” music, al-jeel. We’ll be singing songs from countries that stretch from Egypt in the West to easternmost Iran, from the top of Turkey to Yemen’s southern tip, in the process crossing the whole of Israel/Palestine and the Levant. Over the next three months we’ll be dancing the dabke, singing Azeri love songs and celebrating the heck out of Nowruz.
We are revising the AllAroundThisWorld.com site — the information you’re seeking may still be here, but a lot of links are broken and details may be out of date. We are currently using a new (better!) site — ExploreEverywhere.com — to tell you all about our class offerings, our “pen pal” program and how to become one of our teachers, and will eventually be moving all the goodies from here over to there. So, GO TO THE NEW SITE!
