The music described in that BBC piece is a VERY long way from "rhythmical shouting". It's all the product of an advanced civilization.

That Ugaritic hymn has been reinterpreted over and over again for fifty years, it's obviously a complex composition but the notation is tantalizingly just a bit too ambiguous for us to interpret definitively now. The BBC story is about a lot more than that.

For more on Syrian music, look up the late Julien Jalaluddin Weiss and the al-Kindi Ensemble. Their recordings are not too hard to come by.