The Shimmydown Social is a Middle Eastern Music and Dance Jam facilitated by Sulh and Real Live Actual Bellydance. The Butchertown Social has wonderfully allowed us to host the events at their venue!

General Info

On this page you’ll find simplified sheet music arrangements of tunes we’ll be jamming on during the Shimmydown Social Events. Only public domain (i.e. non-copyrighted) tunes will be found here. All charts for non-public domain tunes* will be supplied at the event site which will be turned in to a designated member of Sulh at the end of events. Anyone with an instrument is free to participate and there is no obligation to play through everything so take a break whenever you feel like it. Please join our Shimmydown Social Facebook group for updates, news about uploaded scores, and to make suggestions on future tunes for the jams.

Sheet Music Parts Info

Parts are arranged by range and clef. See following list for examples of instruments that could play each part:

• Treble C instruments: violin, flute, ney, piano
• Treble B♭ instruments: clarinet, trumpet
• Alto C instruments: violin, oud, ney, piano
• Alto Clef: viola
• Bass C instruments: cello, bass, trombone, piano
• Guitar Tab: guitar
• Percussion: dumbek, riqq, daf, unpitched percussion

Structure of the Jam

The beginning of the evening will consist of a short tutorial on dancing by a member of River City Raqs Belly Dance and on some of the basic rhythms we’ll be playing throughout the evening by a member of Sulh.

During the jam a short description explaining the rhythm (iqa’at, usul) and scale (maqam/makam) of a tune will be given and we’ll play through the tune a few times and vamp on the main rhythm to give anyone who would like a chance to improvise in the maqam of the tune. There may well be open improvs over Middle Eastern rhythms as well as drum jams (also in middle eastern rhythms). We will have plenty of room for improvisation!

We’ll start the evening with simpler tunes that are mono-rhythmic and eventually moving onto tunes with multiple rhythms and then also multiple tempo changes.

Note that the Shimmydown Social is not just about the music–there will be dancers participating, so please be mindful of appropriate interaction between musicians and dancers.**

Public Domain Tunes

Non-Public Domain Tunes

___________________________________

NOTES

*Members of Sulh support the artists writing the tunes we love to play and their right to earn revenue from their works. If it turns out that any of the tunes in the public domain list are actually copyrighted, please let Sulh know and we will look into it and verify. If it turns out the tune is copyrighted, we will pull the charts from the list and move song info to the Non-Public Domain Tunes list and list credits where due.

**For some general etiquette for belly dance events, please visit this link: http://mellilah.com/blog/belly-dance-etiquette/. Note that this is primarily from the audience standpoint so take that into account.