An Open Research Dataset of the 1932 Cairo Congress of Arab Music

TL;DR

This paper presents ORD-CC32, an open dataset from the 1932 Cairo Congress of Arab Music, enabling computational analysis of Arab musical traditions through structured metadata, acoustic features, and case studies.

Contribution

The paper introduces a comprehensive, openly accessible dataset with detailed annotations and features for Arab music, supporting interdisciplinary research and analysis.

Findings

Demonstrates potential for data-driven analysis of microtonal differences

Provides tools for feature extraction and metadata retrieval

Enables studies of tuning, temperament, and regional variations

Abstract

This paper introduces ORD-CC32 , an open research dataset derived from the 1932 Cairo Congress of Arab Music recordings, a historically significant collection representing diverse Arab musical traditions. The dataset includes structured metadata, melodic and rhythmic mode tags (maqam and iqa), manually labeled tonic information, and acoustic features extracted using state-of-the-art pitch detection methods. These resources support computational studies of tuning, temperament, and regional variations in Arab music. A case study using pitch histograms demonstrates the potential for data-driven analysis of microtonal differences across regions. By making this dataset openly available, we aim to enable interdisciplinary research in computational ethnomusicology, music information retrieval (MIR), cultural studies, and digital heritage preservation. ORD-CC32 is shared on Zenodo with tools for feature extraction and metadata retrieval.