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47 albums · 1940–2025

Music of Iraq, from the maqam of Baghdad and Munir Bashir's oud to Kadim Al Sahir, the Kurdish song and today

· 1 min read · by 1001 Albums

A white-haired man playing the oud in the street
Kadim Al Sahir singing with arms raised, a cellist, a qanun player and a choir behind himA singer at the microphone between violins, a drum, a flute and a cello on a lit stage
An oud player on Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Photo: Safa.daneshvar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Kadim Al Sahir at the Royal Opera House Muscat in 2016. Photo: Khalidalbusaidi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Adnan Karim in concert in Erbil in 2022. Photo: Kushared (Mohammed Serdar), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Iraq's music runs from the maqam of Baghdad, sung by Mohammed Al-Qubanchi, Yusuf Omar, Nazem Al-Ghazali and Hamid Al-Saadi and in the songs of Salima Murad, Zuhur Hussein and the Al-Kuwaity brothers, to the oud of Jamil and Munir Bashir, Naseer Shamma, Rahim AlHaj and Khyam Allami; then the singers of the seventies and eighties, Ilham Al-Madfai, Saadoun Jaber, Hussain Naama and Fuad Salim, Kadim Al Sahir, the Kurdish song of Hassan Zirak and Adnan Karim from Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, the Assyrian song of Janan Sawa and Linda George, and today the pop of Hussam Al Rassam and Rahma Riad and the hip hop of Narcy and I-NZ. The list has 47 records from 1940 to 2025, one or two by each and only a small part of what they made; the religious chant, the song of the south and the marshes, the maqam 78s that never reached streaming and most of the classical tradition would each need a list of their own. About 47 hours of music, 5 days of a few records each.

By genre

Pop 19%Classical 8%Folk & Country 5%Other 68%
  • Pop 19%
  • Classical 8%
  • Folk & Country 5%
  • Other 68%

The genres named most: iraqi, pop, oud, classical arabic, maqam, folk.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 1 country: Iraq 47. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1940s

The 1950s

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

The 2020s

More lists

Lists of Countries first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.