Middle Eastern Rhythm Resourses

These are some of the middle eastern rhythm resources I've found useful in learning to play and dance to arabic and mizrachi music.

For Verbal/Written Learners

• Khafif - Great breakdown and notation of the most rhythms everywhere, and includes regional and historical information for almost all of them. A wealth of information, but verbose and he uses very traditional translit for the Arabic.
  
• Carmine Guida - Another great general breakdown, with a couple variations for each rhythm. Not as wordy as Khafif's (and also, not as complete), so perhaps a little easier to process.
  
• Baba Yaga Music - I really like the Baba Yaga breakdown of rhythms because they include information about each rhythm, and also links to videos and recordings of musicians and dancers using each rhythm!
  

For Auditory Learners

• Radio Laria - albums from the artist collective Radio Laria - long, simple tracks using basic middle eastern rhythms that are great to play along to.
  
• Carmine Guida - Yup, same guy. He's so helpful. He's got several albums, some include instruction and practice tracks for basic rhythms, some include simple rhythms with simple melodies overtop for beginning dancers and musicians. (If you check his website at carmine.com, he even has sheet music for over 30 songs, with what makam is being used and what rhythm they should be played with.)
  
• Amir Sofi - another great artist with rhythm practice tracks which break down each pattern and then explore how to modify it.
  
• Armando Mafufo - another great artist with rhythm practice tracks. Armando's practice albums include some more obscure rhythms like Samai Thaqil and Curcuna.
  
• RokedBeGeshem - I'm in the process of building spotify playlists which consist of traditional songs, pop and rock songs, and instructional tracks for each rhythm. They're under construction, so feel free to contribute if you know songs which use mainly a specific rhythm!
  

For Visual/Kinesthetic Learners

• CajonDarbuka - a great youtuber who posts videos for each rhythm, showing lots of different popular ways of accenting the basic rhythm.
  
• Karol Wilkoszewski - another youtuber who posts breakdowns and lessons of rhythms for darbuka, cajon, and djembe. He gets into musical timing and hand technique, and it's very easy to play along to his lessons.