Chimta

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Two chimta

Chimta ( chimtā, also chimpta , Punjabi ਚਿਮਟਾ, Urdu چمٹا[Pronunciation tschimta ], "tongs") is a percussion instrument , which in northern India , especially in Punjab , in the neighboring Pakistani province of Punjab , in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana in folk music and in the religious music, especially the Sikhs , is played . The chimta is also used by Sufi followers in religious music in Pakistan . With the pop music style bhangra , which emerged from a Punjabi folk dance , the chimta was spread in the Indian diaspora communities in the west. The basic shape of the chimta is derived from barbecue tongs and consists of two iron tongues that are hit against each other with a springy action, which causes a number of rattle plates ( cymbals ) to sound on the outside of the tongues.

Design

The chimta belongs to those already in Roman Egypt occurring Fork Basin and substantially corresponds to a barbecue tongs, for example, serves in Indian households, chapatis over an open fire are crisp to let. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs system , the chimta is a stick rattle within the group of indirectly beaten idiophones , according to the Indian classification it is assigned to the corresponding category ghana vadya . The instrument consists of a steel strip which is bent in the middle by 180 °, so that two metal tongues about 60 to 75 centimeters long are created, which remain almost parallel to each other at an acute angle. The distance between the two tongues in the rest position can be adjusted with a movable clamp at the kink. The kink is formed into an eyelet through which a ring is loosely pulled. On the outside of each tongue, two groups of five or more brass disks (cymbals) are loosely placed in pairs on pins. A locking ring at the end of the pins prevents the washers from falling out.

The musician holds the chimta with the palm of his left hand at the kink and beats the ring rhythmically against a tongue with his fingers from below. With the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, he also presses the two tongues together in the middle of the free space between the cymbals while holding the instrument in front of his upper body. Alternatively, a short chimta can be held in the left hand with the index finger inserted through the loop.

In some versions, which are also used in western countries, the cymbals are missing and instead the smooth tongues are struck against each other or with a metal stick. This turns the chimta into a counter-strike or serve idiophone. Counter-strike idiophones (two self-sounding objects are struck against each other) in the form of cymbals or pair cymbals (generally tal or taal , in South India talam ) from four to over 40 centimeters ( bartal in Assam) are widespread throughout the country as a clock in folk music and religious music. A sounding idiophone that only occurs in Rajasthan is the sound record sri mandal . It consists of several metal disks of different sizes, which are hung on strings in a wire frame and are struck during religious ceremonies.

Closely related to the chimta is the fork-shaped bamboo rattle toka in the northeast Indian state of Assam. Kartal ( khartal ) is a widely used name for wooden rattles of various shapes, in which two pairs of cymbals are hung on axes in a wooden block. Mostly religious song singers hold a kartal in each hand and hit the edges together. The purr rattle lezim in Maharashtra consists of a wooden stick about 50 centimeters long. A slack cotton cord is tied at both ends, which - stretched in the middle - forms an approximately equilateral triangle with the stick. The iron disks lined up in pairs on the string sound when the player holds the stick with one hand and pulls the string with the other. The lezim is used in processions and dances, especially in the women's group dance, also known as lezim .

Style of play

The chimta is used as a rhythmic accompaniment instrument for songs and instrumental pieces for entertainment in folk music and for the religious singing styles kirtan and bhajan , mostly together with the barrel drum dholak .

Pakistan, Afghanistan

The Punjabi singer Alam Lohar

The folk music of Punjab is predominantly vocal. In Pakistani Punjab, communal dances and the associated dance songs are more common than in other, more Islamic-conservative provinces. One or two lead singers perform a verse as a soloist or with rhythmic accompaniment, which is repeated in alternating chants by the rest of the group, leaving out the first line of verse. The most popular forms of singing include mahiya, dhoola and boli . The mahiya songs use the three-line veryp tappa, from which the classical singing style tappa arose. Boli consists of improvised pairs and forms the structure of dance songs for the bhangra dance style of men and the giddha dance style of women. The songs, which are about melodramatic love stories of mythical heroes, are often sung in competition between several groups at weddings and other occasions.

The collective term for professional male singers and dancers with a low social level in Indian and Pakistani Punjab is mirasi . The Muslim Mirasi trace their origins back to the Quraish tribe and to the time of the Prophet Mohammed . They traditionally appear at the invitation and to entertain wealthy families in the villages. A Mirasi group, the Ras Dharia, perform spectacles of well-known folk tales in the evening by the glow of kerosene lamps, which they interrupt with songs accompanied by chimtas . Other street musicians have left their home village, move around and perform with their religious songs, chimtas and the single-stringed plucked instrument ektara at mausoleums where Muslim saints are venerated. Chimta players are obviously associated with the blacksmith caste (Lohar in Pakistan).

A popular Pakistani folk music singer from the Punjab is Qurban Ali Niazi (Kurban Niazi, * 1947), whose career began as a street musician in the villages with singing and chimta , accompanied by a dhol player. Today he appears as a singer in a band with chimta , harmonium, a plucked single-stringed spit lute tumbi , a double- beaked flute jori (corresponds to the alghoza ) and a dhol . Born in Punjab as the son of a blacksmith, Alam Lohar (1928–1979) was one of the most popular Pakistani folk music singers. He always accompanied himself with a chimta and made the instrument popular on the concert stage. His son Arif Lohar (* 1966) continues this tradition.

In the Sufi centers ( khanaqāh ) around Kabul until the 1970s, religious songs were accompanied by instruments of urban Afghan music at nightly meetings , a practice that orthodox mullahs condemned. The musical instruments included a harmonium , the plucked rubab and tanbur , the string instrument dilruba from northern India and the chimta as a rhythm generator and the stone rattles qairaq . Wandering dervishes and Qalandar followers are called malang in Pakistan . Some Qalandar dervishes sing religious songs in which they accompany themselves on the single-stringed plucked yaktaro , the wooden rattle khartalon in their left hand and sometimes with bells tied around their ankles. Some malang produce percussive noises with chimtas in ecstatic round dances except with the bells attached to their clothes . Followers of the Sufi saint Shah Madar (Shah Badi ud-Din, * around 1050 or lived 1315–1434), who was born in Aleppo and worked in northern India, also hit the back with their chimta while dancing . As bedeutendster, chimta -spielender malang in Pakistan Sain Mushtaq applies.

A possible reference to the importance of chimta as a ritual instrument in Pakistan dervishes could be a source from the 14th century, which is of a pair of tongs the speech as a relic of the Prophet in the Al-Hussein Mosque in Cairo was kept . The Pakistani malang use fire tongs to stoke their holy fire ( machh ). Iranian chaksar dervishes use similar iron tongs ( anbur ) to beat the beat in their zikr ceremonies .

Uttar Pradesh, Haryana

In folk music in Uttar Pradesh, India, and especially in group singing, particular emphasis is placed on rhythm. In addition to the chimta, the cymbals manjira , the barrel drum dholak and the plucking drum ektara are used for this . The melodies come from their own folk song tradition or are related to the tone sequences of classic ragas . Chimta and the Holzklapper kartal are usually found around the dholak .

Dholak, manjira and chimta belong together with the small hourglass drum deru (corresponds to the dhadd ) to the devotional music for the folk god Gugga (a snake god), who is supposed to protect against snake bites in Rajasthan, Haryana and in the north to Himachal Pradesh . Gugga is worshiped by Hindus and Muslims alike. At the annual festival Gugga Naumi in Haryana the believers ( bhagat , from bhakti ) march through the streets in a procession with the musical instruments mentioned, a symbol of the deity and five dancers. At the spring festival Holi , the percussion instruments dhol (large barrel drum), jhanjh (cymbals), chimta, kartal (rattle) and thali (sheet metal with a bent edge) are used in Haryana to accompany the exuberant dances of men and women .

One of the folk song genres in Kashmir, in the far northwest of India, is the satirical verse laddishah, in which a male singer humorously addresses social or political issues while accompanying himself on a chimta . The classical music of Kashmir, Sufiana mausiqi , shows Persian influences . The younger folk music genre chalant brings the more elegant classical style together with the louder chakri , one of the most famous folk music styles, in which five to six singers form a choir, which repeats the verse of the cantor in unison. When chalant the same number of singers is from a reed organ , the boiler drum pair tabla , of dholak, chimta and Thali rhythmic background.

Punjab

Sikh musicians with chimta and dholki

The music played by amateur groups in Punjab, India is divided into wedding songs, lamentations, women's labor songs, dance songs and others depending on the occasion. The dance music styles include the male dances bhangra and jhumar ( jhummar ) and the female dances sammi and giddha . The chimta, the wooden rattle kato ( katto , a stylized squirrel attached to the end of a wooden stick whose head and tail are made to rattle by pulling on strings), the small plucking drum bughchu , which resembles the hourglass drum damaru , serve as simple rhythmic accompanying instruments. and the gharha, a clay pot corresponding to the south Indian ghatam , which is beaten with rings on the fingers.

The demanding religious music of the Sikhs ( gurmat samgit ), which they cultivate in their meeting places ( gurdwaras ), belongs in music theory to North Indian classical music and has adopted 31 rags analogous to the local modal concept of the ragas . The 31 rags are assigned to the 31 chapters of the sacred scripture of the Sikhs, Adi Granth ( Guru Granth Sahib ). In practice, the Sikh musicians ( ragis ) understand their hymn chants as a folk tradition. Therefore they use the small barrel drum dholki and the chimta for rhythmic accompaniment without hesitation . Both percussion instruments cannot be used for classical music because they can only produce a very limited number of different bols (drum beats classified according to their sound quality). The quality of the bols is, however, in addition to the beat cycle ( taal ) of central importance for the measure of time in classical music. Through the use of dholki and chimta in the religious music of the Sikhs, classical music and folk music form a rare connection - and one that has been criticized by classically educated musicians. Another criticism is directed against the commercialization and flattening of the Sikh songs ( kirtan, kirten ) when the singers no longer use the rags composed for the sections ( shabad ) of the Adi Granth , but rather motifs from pop music or from as a melodic basis Performing film music ghazals .

When it comes to the music and dance of the Punjabis living in western countries, bhangra is the first thing that is meant. This mix of styles of western pop music and Punjab folk music became popular among the Punjabis living in Great Britain in the 1980s and forms a niche in world music that is essentially limited to Indian diaspora communities . The circle dance, which probably originated from a Punjabi folk dance performed during the grain harvest, is traditionally composed of the barrel drum dhol and chimta beaten with sticks, as well as the rattle sap ( sapp, wooden sticks connected with joints that are pressed together like an accordion), the spit lute tumbi or a similar ektara (for a rhythmic drone ) and the double- beaked flute accompanied by alghoza . The always male dancers wear anklets ( ghunghru ) or play the wooden rattles kato . Instead of bhangra, women perform the dance giddha , in which the rhythm is generated by clapping hands without drumming. In today's popular pop versions of bhangra (actually disco bhangra ), which have little in common with the original Punjabi dance, gender segregation has been abandoned and the music is largely shaped by Bollywood music and DJs .

literature

  • Laurence Libin: Chimta. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 517
  • Keyword: Chimtā. In: Late Pandit Nikhil Ghosh (Ed.): The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Music of India. Saṅgīt Mahābhāratī. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press, New Delhi 2011, p. 239

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Introducing the Chimta. Youtube video ( chimta without cymbals and beaten with sticks)
  2. ^ Gallery of Musical Instruments. Museum of Performing Arts. Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi, p. 38f
  3. Lezim - Indian Folk Dance. Youtube video
  4. Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva: Musical Instruments of India: Their History and Development . KLM Private Limited, Calcutta 1978, p. 59
  5. Chimtā. In: Late Pandit Nikhil Ghosh (Ed.): The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Music of India. Saṅgīt Mahābhāratī, 2011, p. 239
  6. Shankarlal Bhatt, Gopal K. Bhargava (Ed.): Land and People of Indian States and Union Territories. Vol. 22: Punjab . Kalpaz Publication, Delhi 2006, p. 353
  7. ^ Regula B. Qureshi: Pakistan. VIII. The regional forms of music. 2. Music in the Punjab. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Vol. 7, 1997, col. 1326
  8. Adam Nayyar: Punjab. In: Alison Arnold (Ed.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Vol. 5: South Asia: The Indian Subcontinent. Routledge, London 1999, pp. 756, 769
  9. ^ Lok Virsa pays tribute to Qurban Niazi's. Associated Press of Pakistan, October 1, 2016
  10. ^ Folk music leaves audience awestruck. Pakistan Press Foundation, May 30, 2010
  11. ^ John Baily : Songs from Kabul: The Spiritual Music of Ustad Amir Mohammad. (Soas Musicology Series) Ashgate Publishing, Farnham 2011, p. 21
  12. Zahra Taheri: Ḵāksār. in: Encyclopædia Iranica
  13. Jürgen Wasim Frembgen : Dervishes. Lived Sufism. Wandering mystics and ascetics in the Islamic Orient. DuMont, Cologne 1993, p. 179
  14. Nisha Sahai-Achuthan: Folk Songs of Uttar Pradesh. In: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 31, No. 3, Fall 1987, pp. 395-406, here pp. 395, 403
  15. Balkar Singh: A General Study of Haryanvi Folk Dance. In: International Journal of Scientific Research , Vol. 5, No. 8, August 2016, p. 90
  16. Shabir Ahmad Mir: A Panoramic View of Kashmiri Music. In: Sangeet Galaxy , Vol. 4, No. 2, July 2015, pp. 33–41, here p. 39
  17. Ghalar (Kato). singers-of-punjab.blogspot.de (picture)
  18. Gibb Stuart Schreffler: Vernacular Music and Dance of Punjab. In: Journal of Punjab Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Special Issue on Culture of Punjab) Fall 2004, pp. 197-214, here pp. 200f
  19. Karminder Singh Dhillon: Sri Guru Granth Sahib: Parkash & Gurgadee Diharas. In: The Sikh Bulletin. Vol. 10, No. 9-10, September-October 2008, p. 3, fn. 11
  20. Laura Leante: Shaping Diasporic Sounds: Identity as Meaning in Bhangra. In: The World of Music , Vol. 52, No. 1/3 (The World of Music: Readings in Ethnomusicology) 2010, pp. 229-252, here p. 231
  21. Gibb Stuart Schreffler, 2004, p 209