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Analyses by Maqam

Here are links to the complete analyses used in in this site, organized by maqam. As stated before, this site is incomplete; I've included only about a third of the Maqamat in common usage, and within those only Rast, Bayati, and Zanjaran are in any sense complete. The song selections were made for the sake of illustrating the analytical principles outlined in "Maqam Analysis: A Primer." I did want to offer a fairly complete picture of Maqam Rast, which is the most important and central maqam in the tradition during the period in question (20th century up to 1970). A number of significant maqamat are not represented at all on this site, namely: Nahawand, Kurd, Saba, and other members of the Sikah family. Zanjaran, in reality a rare maqam, is in fact over-represented on this site, but I chose it include it as a representation of exactly that: a rarely used maqam, to contrast with very common maqamat like Rast and Bayati.