a traditional Middle Eastern and North African stringed musical instrument with a distinctive melancholic sound, or in some contexts, a type of gazelle.
From Arabic 'qanun' was sometimes transliterated as 'gaz' in European languages; alternatively may relate to Persian or Turkish musical terminology. The spelling varies significantly across English and European languages.
The 'gaz' (or similar instruments) are tuned using a system called 'microtones' that divides the octave into more than 12 notes, which is why Arabic music can sound exotic to Western ears trained on only the 12-note chromatic scale.
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