Traditional Arab songs are styled to facilitate Tarab, the experience of a heightened emotional state through the intense performance of music. It is the experience of a kind of ecstasy, a rapturous state of enchantment in which normal life seems to be transcended. Performers and listeners are involved together in deeply felt emotions as they engage in exclamatory gestures and share a palpable understanding of the inner meaning of the music. The concert will be led by two remarkable singers, Ali Al Haggar, specialising in Maqam and traditional rhythms, and Jahida Wehbe, a very famous Lebanese singer with a powerful voice that captures the hearts of listeners. In a unique concert, they will sing evocative songs made famous by an array of great twentieth-century Arab singers, such as Sayyid Darwish, Um Kulthum, Warda, Asmahan, Abdel Wahab and Fairouz, among others, with new arrangements for orchestra. Accompaniment is by a traditional small music ensemble as well as by the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra.
