Middle East & Beyond

Politics, be damned! Here's your passport to the Middle East through its exotic and stunningly diverse pop heritage. Acquaint yourselves with the Farid El Atrache — composer of Egyptian music, singer, actor and legendary player of the oud (the granddaddy of lutes) — and Amr Diab ("Nour el Ain"), the golden boy of Port Said.

Collaborations between Middle East and West take Arabic music to a wider audience, which makes Phil Thornton's Anglo-Egyptian hook-up with percussionist Hossam Ramzy ("At the Gates of the Citadel") an invaluable project. Siavash Shams ("Crazy Fire Persian Fire") cross-pollinates between cultures with heartfelt techno-pop.

Here, we've ventured beyond the pillars of Arabic music into some fascinating backwaters of the world music universe, like the Armenian folk of Bambir ("Komitas 1"), whose work emerged from the rubble of the 1988 Armenian earthquake, and the Tsinandali Choir ("Turpani Skhedan"), the Eastern Georgian masters of the table song.

Polyphonic choral work, mind-bending percussion, techno-fusion, octave-defying vocal gymnastics…you'll find all of this and much more in our Middle East & Beyond Essentials playlist, which transports you from southern Spain to the Persian Gulf and further afield — even to the fringes of the former Soviet Union. We put the old guard side-by-side with the vanguard, whose numbers include the beguiling Niyaz, with their self-styled, modern/medieval "folk music for the 21st century." Indulge and savor.