This essay examines tarab, an Arab musical tradition deeply rooted in the Near East region, and evaluated by listeners based on its emotional effect. Tarab culture has been influenced by westernization, forces of globalization, postcolonial nationalism, and modernism since the early 20th-century, which significantly changed the face of this musical culture by the end of the century. The main focus of this essay is discussing the cumulative effects of tarab’s musical and non-musical elements that together produce the emotional transformation experienced by the performers and the listeners.  To understand that emotional transformation, the relevant aspects of music psychology and philosophy to tarab music are discussed through a number of findings, such as musical expressiveness through the aesthetic surface, anticipatory arousal which results from familiarity and knowledge, the aesthetic appeal of unpleasant emotions such as sadness, openness to experience and aesthetic appreciation that indicates sensitivity to art and beauty, empathetic and sympathetic engagement with the persona imagined in the music, and dissociation from ordinary consciousness and absorption in the musical experience.