Zorba and the Bouzouki.
The eight bars Theodorakis wrote for a beach scene in 1964 — and the dance that didn't exist before Anthony Quinn improvised it.
Anouar Brahem on ECM.
Madar (1994), Blue Maqams (2017): how a Tunisian ud player on a Munich jazz label changed what European audiences expected of the oud.
Crossing the Bridge.
Fatih Akın handed a microphone to Alexander Hacke and surveyed Istanbul. The film toured Cannes and Sundance and rewrote Europe's idea of Turkish music.
Hollywood's Desert Strings.
Maurice Jarre's 1962 Lawrence score, Jerry Goldsmith's Mummy, Alan Menken's Aladdin: how the kanun and ud became Hollywood's permanent sand-shorthand.
Djawadi's Eastern Strings.
Ramin Djawadi made the ud and duduk Game of Thrones's emotional ID. Hans Zimmer's Black Hawk Down had set up the vocabulary 17 years earlier.
Gabriel's Passion.
The Scorsese soundtrack that launched Real World Records — kanun, ud, ney, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and the founding document of "world music".
