Mukhavina

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Mukhavina , also mukha vina ( Sanskrit मुखवीणा, from mukha , "mouth", "face" and vina , "(string) instrument"), is a short, cone-shaped double reed instrument of Indian music , which is mainly used in some forms of Hindu temple music in southern India dhanki is often played with the kettle drum .

In general, mukhavina refers to the group of Indian double-reed instruments , which include the larger South Indian nadaswaram, the North Indian shehnai and other cone oboes played in regional folk music. These date from ancient Indian times or came to South Asia with several waves of Muslim conquest .

origin

Irulas, an Adivasi group in the southwest Indian Nilgiri Mountains with mukhavina and the cylinder drum dappu . Photo from 1871/72

In the Sangam literature , which was written in Tamil in the first centuries AD , there are numerous descriptions of the South Indian musical culture of that time. The epic Silappadigaram describes the division of the districts according to occupational groups, the location of the temples and palaces and the highly developed music-making practice. Above all, the beating of the drums could be heard from the great temples. According to the Silappadigaram, dance performances and relief representations on religious buildings, such as the stupa of Amaravati from the 2nd century AD, were accompanied by singing, bow harps or lutes , flutes, pipe drums and clapping of hands. A conical wind instrument - probably with a double reed - provided a drone that was tuned to the pitch of the drums. In India, wind instruments are of secondary importance compared to string instruments, since according to religious laws they are not allowed to be played by brahmins and therefore belong to the music of the low castes. The only exception is the bansuri ( murali ) flute associated with the young shepherd god Krishna , which is particularly valued as a god instrument. In South India, double reed instruments often accompanied the melody instruments with a drone. They also include the bagpipes , which, according to South Indian tradition, have a long history.

Like Krishna with the flute, the goddess Sarasvati is shown with the stringed instrument vina . Since the Middle Ages, vina has denoted different rod zithers ( Rudra vina and vichitra vina ) and long-necked lutes ( Sarasvati vina ) with corresponding prefixes . In contrast, there is mukha vina , the "mouth" played, ie "blown vina", for the group of Indian cone oboes, which either come from ancient Indian tradition and were brought to the north-west Indian region with the first Muslim conquerors at the beginning of the 8th century Sindh or belong to the Central Asian-Persian culture, which spread from the 13th century and especially in the 16th century during the Mughal period .

The first wind instruments, which presumably had a double reed, are connected with the immigration of Central Asian peoples at the turn of the ages. The oldest Indian word for a double reed instrument, mohori , goes back to the music scholar Matanga, who wrote the treatise Brihaddeshi in Sanskrit between the 6th and 8th centuries . He mentions the reed instrument madhukari (also madhukali ), correspondingly in Telugu it is called mahudi and magudi . Both are now South Indian names for pungi , a simple reed instrument played by snake charmers. Mohori appears in different spellings in later texts. The Canarian composer Purandara (1484–1564) wrote mourya , the poet Govindavaidya mentioned the wind instrument mouri around 1650 . The Khasi in northeast India now play the tangmuri, whose name is related . Other spellings for double reed instruments that can be clearly identified as such in Sanskrit texts from the 10th to 13th centuries are mahvari ( madvari ), muhuri and muhari . These names and the type of oboe they refer to go back to the Arabic mizmar , which was part of the military music of the Arab conquerors of Sindh.

The in northern India in the classical music played shehnai with instruments of folk music as the smaller Sundri in Maharashtra related. The Shahnai heard since the introduction of its precursors in India after the establishment of the Sultanate of Delhi early 13th century the oriental cone oboe type surnay ( surna ). The harmony of surna , various trumpets ( karna and nafīr ) and large drums ( naqqara ) in an Arab ceremonial orchestra called naubat can be traced back to the 10th century. The South Indian nadaswaram forms the other end of the spectrum of Indian oboe types compared to the shehnai . It is significantly longer than the one-piece shehnai and has a detachable bell. The nadaswaram is mentioned in a text written in Telugu in the 14th century. The mohori , also called mukhavina , played in Odisha in folk music , occupies an intermediate position. It corresponds to a slightly larger shehnai with a detachable bell. The particularly shrill-sounding kuzhal from Kerala is similar in size to the shehnai . Ottu, olagu, naferi, tota, sundari, pipori, pipahi and pipani are other Indian double reed instruments . The pipani from Maharashtra consists of a wooden tube with seven finger holes and one thumb hole and is around 45 centimeters long with the metal cup attached. In Assam , the kali is used in religious music ensembles along with large pair cymbals ( bartal ) and double-cone drums ( khol ). The approximately 60 centimeter long kali (or kalia ) has a play tube made of wood or bamboo with a wide brass bell and six or seven finger holes. The shortest cone oboe in South Asia with a length of around 30 centimeters is the horanewa in Sri Lanka . With five to seven finger holes without a thumb hole, it has only one octave range.

The name mukhavina appears for the first time in the work Panditaradhya Charitra by the Telugu poet Somanatha, who wrote in the 12./13. Century lived, in some ballads written in Telugu, which are said to date from the 14th century, and also in the work Abhinava Bharata Sarasangraha by Mummadi Chikkabhupala, a 17th century author. The treatise on music Sangita Parijata , written around 1600 by Ahobala, describes the mukhavina as a reed-grass tube of a span length wrapped with birch leaves (Sanskrit bhurja ). There is no statement about the type of sound generation. At most, it can be deduced from the context which wind instrument is meant by mukhavina .

Design and style of play

Nayyandi melam with a mukhavina , a barrel drum tavil on the right and behind that a double drum pambai .

The South Indian mukhavina is a conical wooden cone oboe about 35 centimeters long. Unlike the cylindrical oboes with bell of the Persian naubat orchestras ( surnay , corresponding to zurna in Turkey ), the chimes of shehnai, nadaswaram and mukhavina are slightly conical. On some instruments, the wooden bell is surrounded by a copper ring on the edge. The (silver) thin mouthpiece with medium-sized free reeds is removable. The sound is softer and more muffled than with the nadaswaram . The mukhavina has seven or eight finger holes. Like other Indian oboes, it is always played together with a similar, more simply built drone instrument, which is commonly called sruti , in Tamil Nadu ottu . The drone instrument has no handle holes, but has four or five small holes, which are sealed with wax, except for one hole, depending on the desired pitch.

Until the 19th century, small mukhavina ensembles ( cinnamelam , Tamil "small ensemble"), together with a double-cone drum mridangam or a kettle drum dhanki, were part of the accompaniment music in dance theaters such as the Yakshagana in Karnataka . At the beginning of the 20th century the mukhavina was replaced as an accompanying instrument for the Bharatanatyam dances by a western clarinet and the mridangam has now taken the place of a small version of the maddalam . As early as 1891, the British infantryman Charles Russel Day (1860–1900) noted that the European clarinet was occasionally used instead of the mukhavina . In his day, a South Indian ensemble for the accompaniment of dance dramas consisted roughly of two sarangis (string sounds), a tanpura (plucked lute), a mukhavina , a tabla (pair of kettle drums) and a nagasara (double reed instrument for a drone , sruti ). Similar small music groups, which were essentially mukhavina and dhanki , performed at temple festivals, other public festivals, and weddings.

The mukhavina players traveled to annual festivals such as Diwali and Pongal earlier in the festival season and went to the homes of landowners who, as patrons of the arts, issued invitations. The cinna melam ensemble with a mukhavina corresponded to the louder sounding periamelam ensemble ( perya melam ) with a playing-leading nadaswaram , a double reed instrument ottu for the drone tone, a barrel drum tavil and cymbals.

Melam (Sanskrit mela , "assembly", "meeting") describes a musical ensemble in South India, more precisely an ensemble with mukhavina or nadaswaram , which according to tradition should not be missing from any temple procession or wedding. The most widespread ensemble in which the mukhavina is the leader is called nayyandi melam . These ensembles consist of a mukhavina , a bagpipe called tutti in Tamil Nadu sruti upanga , which provides a drone tone, and a mridangam or dhanki as rhythmic accompaniment. Ensembles with mukhavina and dhanki have become rare today. The loud-sounding wedding bands use clarinet , trumpet and saxophone in addition to or instead of shehnai (in the north) or nadaswaram (in the south) . They are in the tradition of British military wind orchestras.

At the Hindu annual festival Panguni Uthiram in Tamil Nadu, the instrumental ensemble nayyandi melam performs in a rich supporting program. The rhythm instruments are a double drum pambai , a barrel drum tavil and cymbals ( thalam ). The musicians dance while playing. The nayyandi melam ensemble also accompanies karakattam dances, which include clay pots filled with water on the heads of the actors and other acrobatic exercises. They are especially performed in the Thanjavur district in Tamil Nadu in honor of the plague goddess Mariamman .

The mukhavina belongs especially to Vishnuit temple ceremonies. Mukhavina and dhanki are regularly played at the Udupi Sri Krishna Matha , a very revered Krishna temple in Udupi (Karnataka).

Like the Irulas , the Kota are an Adivasi group that lives in the Nilgiri Mountains in southwest India. Their traditional orchestra on festive occasions consists of semi-professional musicians who play the mukhavina with a corresponding drone instrument and kombu . Kombu (regionally also kahalay ) are large, curved natural trumpets made of copper, which are always used in pairs. A higher sounding combu is positioned on the right, a lower combu on the left at the edge of the orchestra. There are also several large cylinder drums beaten with sticks, dappu .

literature

  • Rice flora: Mukhavīnā. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 3, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 525
  • Charles Russel Day: The music and musical instruments of southern India and the Deccan . Novello, Ewer & Co., London / New York 1891 ( at Internet Archive )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walter Kaufmann : Old India. Music history in pictures. Volume II. Ancient Music. Delivery 8. Ed. Werner Bachmann. VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1981, pp. 90, 100
  2. ^ Ann Weissmann: Hindu Musical Instruments. In: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (New Series) , Vol. 14, No. 3, November 1955, pp. 68–75, here p. 74
  3. ^ Alastair Dick: The Earlier History of the Shawm in India. In: The Galpin Society Journal , Vol. 37, March 1984, pp. 80-98, here pp. 88, 90, 93
  4. ↑ Nazir A. Jairazbhoy: A Preliminary Survey of the oboe in India . In: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 14, No. 3, September 1970, pp. 375-388, here p. 377
  5. ↑ Nazir A. Jairazbhoy: The South Asian Double Reed aerophones Reconsidered . In: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 24, No. 1, January 1980, pp. 147-156, here p. 155
  6. ↑ Jonathan Katz: Pīpanī. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 4, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 115
  7. ↑ Dilip Ranjan Barthakur: The Music and Musical Instruments of North Eastern India. Mittal Publications, New Delhi 2003, pp. 119f
  8. ↑ Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva: The Double-Reed Aerophone in India . In: Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council, Vol. 7, 1975, pp. 77-84, here pp. 78, 82
  9. ↑ Reis Flora: Mukhavīnā. 2014, p. 525
  10. ^ Charles Russel Day: The music and musical instruments of southern India and the Deccan . 1891, p. 147f
  11. ^ A b Alain Daniélou : South Asia. Indian music and its traditions. Music history in pictures . Volume I: Ethnic Music . Delivery 1. Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1978, p. 124
  12. ↑ Clarinet an Accompaniment for the Chinna Melam? Bharatanatyam and the Worldwide Web
  13. ^ David B. Reck: Musical Instruments. Southern Area. In: Alison Arnold (Ed.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 5: South Asia: The Indian Subcontinent. Routledge, London 1999, p. 366
  14. ^ Charles Russel Day: The music and musical instruments of southern India and the Deccan . 1891, pp. 93, 95
  15. ↑ Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva: An Introduction to Indian Music. Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, New Delhi 1981, pp. 62f
  16. ^ Gregory D. Booth: Brass Bands: Tradition, Change, and the Mass Media in Indian Wedding Music . In: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 34, No. 2, Spring – Summer 1990, pp. 245–262, here p. 254
  17. ↑ festivals - Panguni Uthiram. palanitemples.com
  18. ↑ Karakattam. ( Memento of October 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) folkloremuseum.org
  19. ↑ Geetha Rajagopal: Music Rituals in Temples of South India: Vol. 1. DK Print World, New Delhi 2009, p. 148