Magnetic Tapes

ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-ʿAnānī’s 391 reels: radio, films and private evenings, linked to AMAR’s records.

Digitised and catalogued with the support of AFAC, the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture.

From record to radio

Choose a piece of music. On one side, the early records of it that you can play in AMAR’s Listening room; on the other, the same piece decades later on al-ʿAnānī’s reels, from the radio, films and private evenings.

ملا الكاسات

In the radio programme Ḥadāʾiq al-nagham, kept on reel 344, five versions follow one another: Aḥmad Ṣābir, Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Laylā Murād, Suʿād Muḥammad and the Firqat al-Mūsīqā al-ʿArabiyya. AMAR has the first two on 78 rpm records: you can hear them here.

Choose another piece

239 pieces on records and on the reels

The shelf

Every reel in al-ʿAnānī’s numbering; taller spines hold more recordings. Light up what connects to the rest of AMAR.

Reels with a story

The radio played the old records

Heritage programmes al-ʿAnānī recorded, and the pieces in them that AMAR also has on 78s.

Kunūz al-nagham كنوز النغم

Treasures of melody · 45 recordings on 25 reels
Anghām aṣīla أنغام أصيلة

Authentic tunes · 30 recordings on 17 reels
Alḥān zamān ألحان زمان

Melodies of old · 22 recordings on 14 reels
Ḥadāʾiq al-nagham حدائق النغم

Gardens of melody · 6 recordings on 3 reels
Min tasjīlāt al-hawāt من تسجيلات الهواة

From the amateurs’ recordings · 18 recordings on 13 reels
Sahra ʿarabiyya سهرة عربية

An Arab evening · 8 recordings on 1 reel

Before the tape

Tape came after them: their voices reached the reels from cylinders and records, the kind AMAR keeps and plays.

Three adwār copied from Edison cylinders, on reel 102.

8 recordings in the Listening room
9 recordings, on reels 21, 69, 70 and 161.

30 recordings in the Listening room
19 recordings, ten of them on reel 70.

33 recordings in the Listening room
Qadduhu al-mayyās on reel 70, Yā badr wāṣil on reel 156.

9 recordings in the Listening room
35 recordings, most of them on reels 67 and 68.

14 recordings in the Listening room

ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-ʿAnānī at his tape recorder

The ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-ʿAnānī reels

Within its continuous effort to preserve our musical heritage, the Arab Music Archiving and Research foundation has been digitizing and cataloging for a few years the reels recorded by music researcher late ‘Abd al-‘Azīz al-‘Anānī. These recordings include a selection of Radio concerts and private concerts added to recordings that were offered to late ‘Abd al’-Azīz al-‘Anānī based on the quality of their content. In order to carry out this arduous task, our foundation benefitted from AFAC’s (Arab Fund for Arts and Culture) support dedicated to the digitization, the cataloging, and the publication of these catalogues in order to make them available to researchers and students. The foundation generously put all its archives at the disposal of a number of researchers from Lebanon as well as from other countries, and we chose to publish these lists on our website given the large number of its followers worldwide.

About the ʿAnānī collection

Magnetic Tapes

Choose another piece

The ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-ʿAnānī reels

Catalogue of the reels

Names in the catalogue