It took courage for such a newcomer to venture into hallowed territory. In her first audition, a judge, speaking in Arabic, asked her name, but Ms. Grout indicated that she couldn’t understand the question. So the audience was stunned when she coaxed characteristically syncopated sounds from her oud as she sang along in Arabic.

Image Ms. Grout performs traditional Arab music, at times while plucking an oud, an Arabic version of the lute.

The bewilderment deepened because Ms. Grout speaks English with an oddly unplaceable accent. “I always loved the fact that I had my own accent, and nobody ever could pinpoint where I was from,” she said. “But now it’s frustrating because people are using it to try to take away my credibility as an artist. “

Some Arab musicians dismiss the fuss altogether, framing Ms. Grout’s accomplishments in classical Arab music as a sign of a more thorough and reciprocal globalization. “The assumption seems to be that there is nothing special about the global South imitating Western culture, since that is just the way of the world,” said Mariam Bazeed, an Egyptian writer and vocalist in New York. “But when a Westerner deigns to imitate ‘ethnic’ cultures, then it’s suddenly this great act, worthy of documenting.”

Ms. Grout, the daughter of a pianist and a violinist, began studying music at 5. She picked up classical Arab music in 2010 as an undergraduate music major at McGill University in Montreal when she discovered an article on the web about the Lebanese singer Fairouz. “I listened to her voice online and fell in love with it,” she said. “I started to listen to other Arab musicians, and then I had an oud made for me in Syria.” Soon she was performing at a Syrian restaurant in Montreal.

Classical Arab music competes with the ascendance of Western-style pop among younger generations of Arabs. “She is focusing on a repertoire that is becoming lost among the youth of the Arab world,” said Amir ElSaffar, an Iraqi-American musician and a curator at Alwan for the Arts, a Middle Eastern cultural center in Lower Manhattan. “Umm Kulthum, Fairouz, Asmahan and others, while they are familiar since they are still ubiquitous in taxicabs, local shops and television programs, generally do not resonate with the young generation in the same way some rappers or modern pop singers do, who are talking about issues like love and politics in a way that is more pertinent to our times.”

The nuances of Arab music can be difficult for foreign ears to perceive. “Western classical music is based on the art of harmony, and the melody is restricted,” said Simon Shaheen, a Palestinian oud virtuoso and professor at Berklee School of Music in Boston. “Whereas, in Arabic music, the system is based on rich melody that depends on microtonality, or the sounds that fall between the white and black on the piano.”