Listening to Arabic music on vinyl: tarab, Umm Kulthum and classic Arabic records

Few kinds of music ask as much of a listener, or give as much back, as classical Arabic song; a single Umm Kulthum performance can fill most of an evening. This guide explains why tarab rewards a well-set-up analogue system, gives a short history of Arabic music on records, and covers buying and caring for old pressings, turntable and system set-up, and listening in a majlis.

Why does tarab reward a well-set-up analogue system?

Tarab is the emotional enchantment that a singer and musicians build with their listeners through repetition, improvisation and slow development. Several features of the music make particular demands on playback.

• The voice is the centre. The telling detail lies in the midrange: breath, ornament, and small changes of colour as a phrase returns.
• The maqam. Maqamat such as Rast and Bayati use intervals between a semitone and a whole tone, outside the Western tempered scale. The oud is fretless and the qanun is retuned mid-performance with small levers, so pitch is shaded continuously, and a system that smears timing or adds grain obscures it.
• Acoustic instruments. Oud, qanun, nay, riq and darbuka need clean transients and natural decay, not emphasis.
• Long form and live atmosphere. Many classic recordings were made in concert, with applause and calls from the audience, and a song unfolds over twenty minutes or an hour. A presentation that impresses for three minutes but tires the ear over an hour works against it.

None of this requires analogue playback, and good digital transfers exist. But much of this repertoire appeared on records first, and many collectors in the region have family records of their own.

A short history of Arabic music on records

The 78 rpm era

Arabic music was recorded commercially from the first years of the twentieth century, by European and, later, regional companies working in Cairo, Beirut and other cities. A side of a 78 rpm shellac disc lasted roughly three to four and a half minutes, so performances that ran much longer in concert were shortened or divided across several sides. Umm Kulthum and Mohammed Abdel Wahab both began recording in this era.

The LP and the concert-length song

The long-playing record, introduced in 1948, held twenty minutes or more per side and spread through the Arab world in the following decades. Even so, it could not hold a full concert performance. Umm Kulthum’s monthly Thursday concerts in Cairo were broadcast live on radio across the region, and a single song could last an hour or longer; on record it was often divided between the two sides of an LP, or across several records. Her collaboration with Mohammed Abdel Wahab, which began with Enta Omri, produced songs still widely played today.

The same decades saw the recording careers of Fairuz, in her long collaboration with the Rahbani brothers, and of Abdel Halim Hafez, whose film songs and concerts were widely issued on record. From the 1960s stereo gradually replaced mono, and much of this repertoire has been reissued many times, so one song may exist in several versions.

Gulf voices: Mohammed Abdu and Talal Maddah

In the Gulf, the Saudi artists Talal Maddah, often called Sawt al-Ard (the voice of the earth), and Mohammed Abdu, widely known as Fannan al-Arab, built careers across records, cassettes, radio and television. The jalsa, an intimate session of voice, oud and light percussion, is a recording tradition of its own that rewards a quiet, revealing system. For many Gulf listeners the cassette became the everyday format in the 1970s and 1980s, so original LPs by Gulf artists can be harder to find; reissues and new pressings appear from time to time.

Buying Arabic records: condition, mono and stereo, originals and reissues

Whether you are looking for Umm Kulthum records, Mohammed Abdu records or Arabic vinyl in general, condition matters more than rarity: a clean later pressing gives more pleasure than a worn original.

How are records graded?

Record sellers commonly use a visual grading scale. It is a description, not a guarantee, so ask how a record plays.

Mono or stereo?

Much of the classic repertoire was recorded in mono, which is often the original form of the recording. Some reissues turned mono recordings into simulated stereo, which tends to add phasiness rather than space. Look for “mono”, “stereo” or “electronic stereo” on the sleeve or label.

Originals or reissues?

Early pressings were usually cut from first-generation masters, but many are decades old and were played on heavy, worn equipment. Reissues vary widely: some are carefully remastered from surviving original tapes, others are cut from digital files or later copies. Check the credits for the source and the mastering engineer.

Warped and worn records

A gentle dish or edge warp usually plays; severe warps are rarely worth buying. Groove wear shows as a greyish sheen and as distortion on loud, sustained vocal notes. Cleaning does not cure it, though a different stylus profile sometimes helps.

Cleaning and storing records in a hot climate

• Brush the record with a carbon-fibre brush before each play.
• For deeper cleaning, use a record-cleaning fluid with a vacuum or ultrasonic machine, then rinse with distilled water; avoid household detergents.
• Alcohol dissolves shellac, so clean 78s only with fluids that are safe for it.
• Store records upright, in clean anti-static inner sleeves.
• Heat warps vinyl. Never leave records in direct sun or in a car: in a Gulf summer a car interior easily passes the temperature at which vinyl begins to soften. Keep the collection in an air-conditioned room.

Setting up the turntable for old Arabic records

Our article Vinyl forever covers alignment and general set-up; older records add a few points.

Tracking force and anti-skating

Set the tracking force with a stylus gauge, within the cartridge maker’s range; worn and warped records often track more securely in the upper part of it. Too little force does more harm than slightly too much, because a mistracking stylus damages the groove walls. Set anti-skating to match.

Stylus profile

A conical stylus is tolerant and inexpensive. Elliptical and line-contact profiles trace finer detail and touch a different area of the groove wall, so on records worn by old, heavy players owners often report a cleaner sound from them. On some badly damaged records a conical stylus is quieter.

Mono cartridges for mono records

A stereo cartridge reads lateral and vertical groove movement, but a mono record carries the music only in the lateral movement, so the vertical output is mostly noise from wear and dirt. Summing the channels with a mono switch or adaptor cancels much of it. A true mono cartridge responds only to lateral movement, often with a slightly larger stylus suited to early mono grooves. Do not use a true mono cartridge with little vertical compliance on stereo records: it can damage the grooves.

78 rpm records

Shellac 78s need a 78 rpm speed and a much larger dedicated stylus; a microgroove stylus sounds poor in a 78 groove and can damage it. Many 78s also used equalisation curves other than the RIAA standard adopted in the 1950s, so some sound bright or dull through a standard phono stage; a tone control can partly compensate.

Phono stage gain and loading

A moving-magnet (MM) cartridge usually wants a 47 kΩ load and a total capacitance, cable included, within its maker’s range. A moving-coil (MC) cartridge has a much lower output and needs more gain or a step-up transformer (SUT). Keep the turntable cable short, since its capacitance adds to the load.

Room and system: built around the voice

This music needs a midrange with natural timbre and texture, quiet backgrounds, and a presentation you can listen to for an hour. Low-power single-ended tube amplifiers are commonly chosen for vocal music for these qualities: they work in Class A, often with little or no negative feedback, and their distortion is mostly of low order. Their limit is power, so they need high-sensitivity loudspeakers, and full-range designs that carry the whole vocal range on one diaphragm, without a crossover, are a natural match. Our guide to loudspeakers for single-ended amplifiers explains how to match sensitivity, impedance and room size.

Deep bass matters less here, but a large ensemble still benefits from loudspeakers that reach reasonably low, or from a carefully integrated subwoofer.

Listening in a majlis

Many Gulf collectors listen in a majlis, and a majlis sound system faces different conditions from a small Western living room.

• Size. A large room needs more acoustic power: choose more sensitive loudspeakers or a more powerful amplifier rather than driving a small single-ended amplifier into distortion.
• Seating along the walls. With guests around the room there is no single central seat. Place the loudspeakers on a shorter wall, firing along the room with little or no toe-in, so that most seats are at a reasonable angle to them. Mono records help here: with no left–right image to collapse, listeners at the sides lose less.
• Hard surfaces and soft furnishings. Marble floors and high ceilings make a room lively, while carpets, curtains, cushions and upholstered seating absorb the upper frequencies, so a well-furnished majlis is often already controlled in the treble. Bass is less affected: experiment with loudspeaker position before adding treatment.
• Background noise. Air-conditioning masks quiet detail; lower the fan speed for serious listening.
• The turntable. Place it on a firm stand away from the loudspeakers, keep the phono stage close to it, and run longer line-level cables to the amplifier rather than long phono cables.
• Heat. Give tube amplifiers free air in an air-conditioned space, away from curtains.

In a majlis, music often accompanies conversation. A system with a quiet background and low distortion stays clear at moderate levels, so no one needs to raise their voice.

Which Demograf Audio piece fits

• Phono stage. Ulixes, a phono stage for MM or MC: one chassis and solid-state as standard; a two-stage tube version (a pentode for gain and low noise, then a triode, with a kenotron-rectified supply), a two-chassis build, MM/MC inputs and an MC step-up transformer are options.
• Preamplifier. Hector, a preamplifier in two versions, tube and solid-state, built on a transformer volume control; a passive mode is optional.
• Amplifiers for the voice. Atlas on 300B triodes (5 W) for a sweet, organic midrange; Eurybia on 2A3 triodes (2 W) for tonal weight; Tantal on 3C24 triodes (3 W) for real timbre on voices. For a large majlis, Endymion (15–25 W), Ether (25 W) or Tantal Senior (30 W) give more headroom.
• Loudspeakers. Orpheus, a three-way loudspeaker at 103 dB with a crossover; Perseus MkII, with Supravox field-coil full-range drivers at 93–102 dB; and Cassandra MkII, a two-way at 95 dB that reaches 28 Hz and works from 3 W tube amplifiers.

Every piece is made to order by Dmitriy Gubchenko, with a one-year warranty (extra warranty available: +1 or +2 years). Tell us about your records and your room, and we will suggest a combination.