Several artists took up such a style during the turn of the century including artists such as Sabah, Tamer Hosny, Magida El Roumi, Warda Al-Jazairia, Nawal El Kuwaiti etc. There has also been a rise of reggae, R&B, and hip hop influence of Arabic music in the last 5 years. This generally involves rappers featuring in songs (example is Ishtar in her song 'Habibi').
Moroccan singer Elam Jay developed a contemporary version of Gnawa. He did this by fusing Gnawa with R&B and he named it "Gnawitone Styla. However, certain artists have been using full R&B and reggae beats. This adoption has been met with mixed reactions, be it critical or commercial. Currently it is not a widespread style.
The Arab world is no exception as far as the popularity of rock music is concerned. In the world of Arabic music there are many Arabic rock bands which fuse the sound of hard rock with that of traditional Arabic instruments.
Arabic Rock music is gaining a lot of attention in regions such as the Middle East with bands such as Meen in Lebanon, and with bands like Jadal in Jordan. The band Hoba Hoba Spirit of Morocco is also popular especially in the Maghrebi region. Rachid Taha, who is an Algerian musician, plays a fusion of Raļ and Rock .
Arabic music supposedly comprises the sounds of many instruments from which a number of musical instruments used in Western music are believed to. have been derived. Examples of such instruments are the lute which was derived from Oud, , guitar derived from qitara, adufe which was derived from al-duff, while the alboka which was derived from al-buq, anafil came from al-nafir, the exabeba from al-shabbaba , while the atabal ( or the bass drum) came from al-tabl.