This week's show is divided into two parts. In the first half, we hear tracks to compare three solo plucked instruments -- the oud, the lute, and the guitar. Then we feature three songs by Latin jazz ...

Taking a stroll off the beaten path of the classics finds us listening to rarely heard music for the lute -- and its Arabic precursor, the oud. From a performance in the NPR studios, lutenist ...

At the end of this month, music lovers in New York City will have an exciting opportunity to immerse themselves in the world of the oud - the short-necked fretless lute prominent in Arabic Music and ...

Simon Shaheen is the master of the oud. The Oud is a short-necked, half pear-shaped, plucked lute of the Arab world, the direct ancestor of the European lute. Shaheen has toured much of the country, ...

In a tiny workshop on the roof of his home in a Baghdad slum, Farhan Hassan works in secret, lovingly curving wood and tightening strings to make his ouds - a traditional Arabic instrument. Only close ...

Antoun Tawil, one of Syria's last traditional lute makers, waits in vain in his Damascus workshop for orders of the oud, an instrument his country was once renowned for producing. While the conflict ...

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. An ancestor of the lute, the oud is seen as the quintessential Arabic stringed instrument.

The oud is a lute-like, pear-shaped instrument that has molded and influenced much of Arab classical music. Ramy Adly is an internationally-known oud musician who has performed in the Middle East, ...