Kuwait

Artists from Kuwait, where sawt was developed and where much of Gulf popular music was recorded.

Kuwait’s musical importance is out of all proportion to its size. Sawt, the urban sung-poetry form that anchors classical Gulf music, was developed by Kuwaiti musicians and travelled from there across the peninsula. The pearl-diving fleets left behind the fijiri work-song repertoire. And through the second half of the twentieth century, Kuwait’s studios and radio were where a great deal of Gulf popular music was actually made, for audiences well outside its borders.

Contemporary Kuwaiti artists work across Khaleeji pop, electronic music and rap, still playing to a Gulf-wide audience rather than a national one.