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Eastern and Middle Eastern Instruments

© Deborah Jeter

My goodness, but I thought it would be an EASY thing to cover instruments from the Eastern Hemisphere! I started thinking, either the folks with this info aren't spotlighting it in the search engines or they haven't learned to use META tags yet. However, what I discovered through persistence, is that I wasn't getting much just by typing in "EASTERN INSTRUMENTS" in the search engines. Instead, I had to type in the individual countries of the Eastern Hemisphere and do my searches that way. Anyway, due to the request of a reader that I cover something about Eastern Instruments, I trudged onward and found, well, what I found. As I surfed, I decided to research Middle Eastern instruments as well, so that I could have more information for this article.

One of the first and best leads was from an Israeli man who is the author of several sites about his guitar program. One site is offered in Hebrew and another is in English. This New Music Educational Project link is in Hebrew. This site of Naftali Lahav is in English. He has a kit for constructing your own guitar at The Amazing Eastern Kit-Guitar.

This young man has great passion and love for the native instruments of his country, in particularly, the Rabbab. Each month, he has a new Etude which he offers for downloading.

THE NEW MUSIC EDUCATIONAL PROJECT has been working as an experimental program for three years now. At the moment, this music project is running in 16 schools, and will expand in the coming year. Lahav developed and conducts this educational program for elementary schools in Israel. The main goal of the program is to create a love for music by learning to play an instrument and to help build communication between the students and others around the world through music. Read his announcement at the ArtsEdge Networking Page for more information about how to contact him.

The information for obtaining your kit to build your very own Rabbab Eastern guitar is right here. Support this wonderful endeavor and reward your students at the same time by investigating how you might incorporate this in your school's curriculum.

Musical Malaysia was a pleasant surprise that I found while researching for this article. You can search this site by regional locations or by trends and developments in music or by social and political background. In the music section, you will find some good information on the music in multicultural societies. As far as specific Malaysian instrument resources, you will need to go to this page