Hafez along with composers Mohammed Abdel Wahab and Baligh Hamdi pioneered the use of western instruments in Egyptian music. By the 1970s several other singers had followed suit and a strand of Arabic pop was born. Arabic pop usually consists of Western styled songs with Arabic instruments and lyrics. Melodies are often a mix between Eastern and Western. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Lydia Canaan, musical pioneer widely regarded as the first rock star of the Middle East fused English lyrics and Western sound with Middle-Eastern quarter tones and microtones and became the first internationally successful Lebanese recording artist. Western pop music was also being influenced by Arabic music in the early 1960s, leading to the development of surf music, a rock music genre that later gave rise to garage rock and punk rock. Surf rock pioneer Dick Dale, a Lebanese American guitarist, was greatly influenced by the Arabic music he learnt from his uncle, particularly the oud melodies and skills which he later applied to his electric guitar playing when recording surf rock in the early 1960s. In the 1990s, several Arab artists have taken up such a style including Amr Diab, Moustafa Amar, Najwa Karam, Elissa, Nawal Al Zoghbi, Nancy Ajram, Haifa Wehbe, Angham, Fadl Shaker, Majida Al Roumi, Wael Kfoury, Asalah Nasri, Myriam Fares, Carole Samaha, Yara, Samira Said, Hisham Abbas, Kadhem Al Saher, Mostafa Amar, Ehab Tawfik, Mohamed Fouad, Diana Haddad, Mohamed Mounir, Latifa, Cheb Khaled, George Wassouf, Hakim, Fares Karam, Julia Boutros, and Amal Hijazi. Iraq Due to Iraq's diversity and the long history, the country encompasses the music of a number of ethnic groups and musical genres. In 1936, Iraq Radio was established by two of Iraq's most prominent performers and composers, the Iraqi Jewish musicians, Saleh and Daoud al-Kuwaity with an ensemble, with the exception of the percussion player. The brothers had a pioneering role in the modern music of Iraq. Saleh was considered the father of Iraqi maqam as he was the pioneer of its first song. He also composed for the most famous singers of that era in Iraq and in the Arab world, such as Salima Murad, Afifa Iskandar, Nazem al-Ghazali, Umm Kulthum, Mohammed Abdel Wahab. One of the main reasons for the predominance of Jewish instrumentalists in early 20th century Iraqi music was a prominent school for blind Jewish children in Baghdad, which was founded in the late 1920s by