Thank you for this!! I write a lot about early American folk music and much more of it draws from Arabic influences than we realize. There's a brilliant ethnomusicologist named Sylviane Diouf who connected early Arabic music from the Maghreb with 19th-century African-American soul and blues traditions. https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Muslim-roots-of-the-blues-The-music-of-famous-2701489.php