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The zaghareed1 is a yodel-like ululation performed almost exclusively by women across Africa, the Middle East, and Spain. It sounds like a keening trill punctuated by rapid voice breaks and oscillations—a shrill call to attention . When performed in unison by a group of women, it can have a powerful ambience-altering effect on any (often tense) situation and resembles the irrintzina and various American Indian war yelps. Algerians spooked invading French troops during the Algerian War (– ) with its bone-chilling sounds.2 “The haunting ululations of the Algerian women serve as both a taunt to the French and a challenge to Algerian men to join the fight and take back their country” as “the piercing ululations of the Algerian women seem to be ushering in nothing less than the next phase of history.”3 Zaghareeds feature a repeated high-pitched yelp with ornamentation and glottal leaps similar to yodeling. The wailing, lamenting sound is punctuated by short shrill, almost whistled yips made by rapidly wiggling the tongue while issuing a staccato (cricket-like), high-pitched or falsetto sound (lolo loleeleeleeleeeee) ending in extended crescendo. It features a “single grace note, sung before the beat and usually of a different pitch than the main note, [that] occasionally appears, sounding sob-like. This effect is produced by a sudden blast of air against a nearly closed glottis, accompanied by an abrupt register alteration to introduce momentarily more upper register with hardly any lower register.”4 Broad and versatile, zaghareeds5 can be heard as a spontaneous joyous outburst during celebrations, weddings , or periods of mourning, or may enliven a bellydancing performance. Zaghareeds also serve as war cries, egging soldiers on into battle. Arab vocals are basically divided into Arab pop (rai), classical/virtuoso, and sacred music. Arabic music is generally melodic, rhythmic, homophonic, and complex. It’s been influenced by contact with many other cultures, including African, and has, in turn, especially influenced Andalusia, Iran, and Azerbaijan. Moorish/Arabic vocals are influenced by poetry in form and sound, using accompaniment to increase the import of mystical words. Arabs invented the Ghazal, a love song with rhyming couplets and refrains named after Al-Ghazali, an eleventh-century Renaissance Moslem mystic-philosopher who believed ecstasy was attained by listening to music. Ironically, considering recent stricter interpretations of sharia law with regard to music, Arab women were the first singers. The history of ululation goes back to the undocumented beginning of mankind, but Homer Arab Yodeling:Between Yelp and Ululation  and Aeschylus refer to ululations, which by definition often featured yodel-like vocal acrobatics in ancient Egypt and Greece. Descriptions of ululations date from the second to fourth century AD. For instance, “The Thunder: Perfect Mind,” a female-voiced poem, states: “I am the ancient ululation / and the invisible world of the echo. I am the name of the sound / and the sound of the name.”7 In Ethiopia and other northeastern African nations, this ululation is called ililta and is performed by both secular singers and Ethiopian Orthodox church members. Moreover, Tuareg women punctuate their music with celebratory ululating yodels, or zaghrutas, for emotional emphasis. This is best heard on, oddly enough, “Touareg ” by the ethnofusion, ambient-dub, tribal-house specialists Le Duc. The Tuareq, northern Libya’s nomads, have developed a unique fusion of rockin’ electric guitar music and Arabic song, including zaghareed, which can be heard on Tinariwen’s “Arawan.”8 Mugham Yodeling and Other Iranian Vocals During a reading at New York’s venerable KGB about so-called secret agent numbers radio stations that employed yodeling as a diversionary tactic, I met author Thomas Goltz, who directed me to Jeffrey Werbock, a true musician-expert-fan of Azerbaijani-Iranian music.9  THE LANDS OF YO The Wraith-Like Parisa When I mentioned Parisa (–, Fātemeh Vā’ezi) to an Iranian friend, I saw his eyebrows rise—legendary, that’s for sure. But, then again, he grew up listening to her in prerevolution Iran. Now there’s not much left of her except a few wraith-like images of her on YouTube. But she’s an internationally respected vocalist whose voice projects a larger-than-life figure, casting us beyond our mundane existence into a realm not commonly visited. She studied music and debuted in Tehran at the IranAmerica Society during the shah’s reign and has been critical of Iran’s government since the  “revolution” and its ban on women performing publicly...

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