What is music of the Arab world?

What do you think? What is "music of the Arab world"? How can it be defined?

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here it goes...
Arab music is music that from an etic or emic perspective is considered to belong to or be associated with those that are identified as or self identify as Arab.
So, if you think its Arab music, its Arab music.
I feel like this doesn't really help narrowing it down at all but the concept of Arabic music seems to subjective to a have a neat definition.
Maybe something should be added about distinctive sound qualities, language too. It would be hard to consider a song with a western pop style, sung in english by someone who considers themself to be Arabic, to be Arabic music. At this point it becomes something else I think.

Justina

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What is music of Arab world?

This is a question which can’t be answered easily and it needs reviewing of different aspects. First of all I want to come across the word “ Arab “ and thinking about it as a language which is mostly spoken in the countries that are mentioned as Arab countries and mainly have more cultural similarities(also we should be aware of the countries that speak Arabic but has less cultural similarities). I want to count this two features together for making sense about the expression of “ Arab world “, having cultural similarities and Arabic language.

Music of Arab world is mostly singer-centered and this is why the Arabic words play an important role in this context. I am interested in adding some more factors which may lead us to count a special kind of music as the category of Arab world music; One of those is the intervals which make the special scales or maqams and the other can be the musical instruments but, I think there is a feature that can be mentioned as the most important part and it may be the improvisation or taqsim that seems to be the most effective part of a classical Arabic performance.

Mahsa