The Phenomenon of A-pop in the Arab East: Tradition vs Modernity

Since the second half of the XX century Arab world has experienced various changes in the music scene, the most significant of them: Arab artists become the “legends” on the regional stage; spread of Western genres, which have been re-thought in cultural-specific concepts of the Middle East, and adaption of technological innovation in the production of music. Today it seems possible to consider the established genre of Arab popular music, A-pop (Arabic pop), as a unique authentic phenomenon. The term is introduced in this paper in correlation to the commonly accepted notation for Asian pop music genres (K-pop, C-pop, and J-pop). The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the development of popular music in Arab countries should not be regarded as a product of world culture but as a unique authentic phenomenon. The main research objectives are: to identify the relationship of A-pop with cultural customs in Arab society, to determine the attitude of Arabs to the phenomenon under study. Furthermore, the study of the speech characteristics of popular musical culture can contribute to the description of modern trends in the development of the Arabic language and contribute to the selection of language decoded material which is necessary to resolve the accumulated questions about the formation of its special colloquial form.