It’s been said that music is a universal language, and in some ways, that’s true. Music connects us on a level words alone can’t reach—after all, you don’t have to understand a song’s lyrics to feel its emotional impact.
However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t different musical “languages” around the world. The “Do Re Mi” that we think of as a “standard” scale is only standard in our own cultural context. Around the world, scales sound different.
To demonstrate, 21-year-old Egyptian singer Jowairia Hamdy sang four different scales from four different cultures in a video that’s now been viewed 24 million times. Watch:
Hamdy, who was a finalist on the first season of The Voice Kids Arabia, offered a side-by-side comparison of Western, Romanian, Chinese, and Arabian musical scales by singing them all at once, adding a note at a time to each. People were understandably impressed by her vocal agility and pitch-perfect performance.
But then she did it again, only this time with six different scales:
The skill it takes to sing multiple scales at once
Seriously, though. The talent here is off the charts. As effortless as Hamdy made it look and sound, it wasn’t easy. (“By the end of the video I was on the verge of passing out,” she joked in a comment on the second video.)
Just the breathwork alone is a lot. But as so many comments in multiple languages indicate, flipping back and forth between the scales without a single off-key note deserves a standing ovation:
“Please tell me this is Ai cause this is impossible unless you have ABSOLUTE perfect pitch!!! 🤯🎯🔥”
“An incredible talent to memorize all the tones, without confusing, hold breath, bring the idea, a beautiful voice… one love!! Lots of love for you! And thanks for sharing!”
“👏 👏 👏 👏 Infinite blessings for you and your beautiful voice and privileged ear ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ a delight!!!!!”
“What’s the most boring thing you could possibly watch/listen to a musician do? Running scales. What’s the most beautiful and fascinating thing I’ve seen a musician do in weeks? Scales.”
“The skill it takes to do this with such smooth switches is absolutely amazing.”
A celebration of musical diversity across cultures
Beyond the incredible singing ability on display, these videos celebrate the musical diversity we see in cultures around the world. There’s a reason we can hear a melody and say, “Oh, that sounds Middle Eastern,” or “Oh, that sounds like an Eastern European folk song.” Each region has its own musical flavor, and we know when we hear it.
It’s all about the solfege—or the cultural equivalent of the solfege—in those places. Solfege is the practice of assigning syllables to notes in singing, such as the classic “do, re, mi.” As we see in the scales Hamdy sings, not all musical scales around the world even have the same number of notes, much less the same syllables assigned to the same notes. Solfege differs around the world.
Solfege also differs from written music notation in a few ways. One is that it’s sound-based and not visual. Another is that it’s more about the relationships between notes than the absolute pitch of the notes. This video explains the difference for those who want to dive a bit into the music theory of it all:
You don’t have to know music theory to enjoy music from around the world
We could go deep into the notes, intervals, undertones, overtones, and other nuances that make music from different places sound distinct. But the beauty of music is that you don’t need to know any of the complex technicalities of music theory around the world to enjoy it.
Everyone has their favorite musical genres, of course. And some music might sound strange or even unpleasant to our ears if we’re not accustomed to hearing a variety of musical expressions.
Hamdy can help with that, too. The singer shared another video in which she sings songs from a bunch of different cultures on a tour bus, switching not just between different musical “languages” but between different actual languages.
“Guess what happens when I’m put on a bus with a bunch of different cultures?” she asks. This is what happens:
What a delightfully wonderful and musical world we live in.
You can follow Jowairia Hamdy on Instagram.
