Dambura

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Badakhshan dambura . Ziyadullo Shahidi House Museum in Dushanbe , Tajikistan

Dambura , also danbura , is a fretless two-stringed long-necked lute , which in northern Afghanistan is played as a soloist especially for entertainment in tea houses or in a small ensemble to accompany folk songs. A singer often accompanies himself on the dambura . In a teahouse ensemble, the dambura player typically performs with two singers. Both strings are usually struck up and down with the fingers at the same time. In addition to the melody played only on the upper string, there is a drone on the empty lower string.

The dambura is related to the dombra common in Central Asia . A distinction is made between two variants according to the design: The larger Turkestan dambura with attached neck is most widespread in northern Afghanistan and is the main plucking instrument of the Hazara living in the center of the country . The smaller Badachschan dambura, in which the body and neck are made from one piece of wood, occurs in the province of the same name in the northeast.

Origin and Distribution

Two-string long-necked lutes with different names and variations occur in large numbers in Central Asia , where they spread in pre-Islamic times along the Silk Road between Turkey and China and over the Iranian highlands . In the 9th century, the Chinese author Tuan An-tsi lists a number of musical instruments imported from Central Asia, including short-necked lutes ( pipa ) and long-necked lutes . These "foreign" instruments ( hu ) were particularly popular with Chinese rulers during the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Tuan An-tsi refers to a source of the 2nd / 3rd. Century, towards the end of the Han dynasty , after which the pipa was brought from Central Asia by foreign peoples. In Central Asia , pear-shaped short-necked lutes of the barbat type, similar to pipa , were known. In the Buddhist cave temples and monasteries of East Turkestan (today Xinjiang ) from the 1st millennium AD, roughly the same long-necked lutes, short-necked lutes, angular harps ( tschang ) and other musical instruments are depicted as in their supposed Central Asian region of origin. Even if the origin of individual lute instruments is often not clearly established, the similar forms show a cultural exchange over a wide area in Asia.

In the Persian Qabus-nama from the 11th century, the string instrument do rud ("two gut strings") is mentioned; the name dotār / dutār (Persian "two strings") first appeared around 1500 in a treatise on music from Samarqand . The older long-necked lutes have two or three strings and are plucked with several fingers. Long-necked lutes with more than three strings and the way of playing with a plectrum were added later. Well-known Turkic - Iranian fretted long-necked lutes are called saz in Turkey , dombra in Kazakhstan and dutār in Afghanistan . The Kyrgyz komuz has no leagues. The old dotār or tunbūr with two strings soon seems to have given way to court music in Persia and Central Asia, because it rarely appears on Persian miniatures . Today's variants of the dombra / dambura in simple construction were passed down in the musical culture of the nomads and cattle breeders and belong to the rural music of the Uzbeks and Tajiks . According to the way they are played, the fretless long-necked lutes from the historical region of Khorasan and beyond to the Kurdish tembûr (previously two gut strings, today three steel strings) form a group.

In addition to the two damburas, there are other long-necked lutes in Afghanistan. Dutār denotes several different long-necked lutes with frets: the Herati dutār originally had two strings, a dutār with three strings was developed in the mid-20th century and a dutār with 14 strings was added around 1965 . The two-stringed Uzbek Dutar is popular in Uzbekistan and very rarely found in northern Afghanistan, as well as that of Turkmen played Turkmen Dutar . The tanbūr played with a plectrum, like the rubāb, is an original Afghan stringed instrument and is widely used in various sizes in Kabul and in the north. The tanbūr variants also differ in the number of sympathetic strings and frets. The pegs of the tanbūr are mixed in front for the melody and on the side for the sympathetic strings . The main difference between tanbūr and dambura in Afghanistan is not in the form and playing style, but in the use of the tanbūr , which is largely limited to popular urban (art) music. The dambura , on the other hand, belongs to folk music of the lower classes.

Kazakh dombra . The body is wider in the lower area and the position of the vertebrae is different from that of the dambura.

The Turkestan dambura is the most common lute instrument in northern Afghanistan and among the Hazara in central Afghanistan (in the Hazarajat area). It is played mainly by Uzbeks, Tajiks and smaller ethnic groups such as the Aimaq , including some Turkmen. Afghan Turkestan is the dry steppe-like stretch of land in the north-west of the country with the provinces of Faryab , Juzdschan , Balkh and Samangan . In the east, the dambura occurs as far as the Laghman province, which is mainly inhabited by Pashtuns . To the north of Afghanistan it is replaced by the Uzbek dombra . In the southwest, the dambura is widespread as far as the Badghis province , where it borders on the Herati dutār area . In the northeast, the distribution areas of the Turkestan and Badachschan dambura merge. The latter occurs only in the mountainous regions in the northeast of the country. The Wachan Corridor in the extreme northeast is a narrow strip of land belonging to Afghanistan, which has separated the Russian sphere of influence in the north (now Berg-Badachschan in Tajikistan) from the colonial possessions of British India (now Pakistan) since the 1890s . Before that, the entire Badachschan region was culturally connected, which is why the dumbrak played on the Tajik side in the high mountains largely corresponds to the dambura .

The dambura is also related to the five-string chitrali sitar , which is played in the neighboring Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the east and has nothing in common with the Indian sitar except for its name . The design made of mulberry wood is similar to that of the dambura . Both long-necked lutes sound relatively quiet and are used to accompany vocals. The two- to four-stringed, mostly fretless damburag in the Pakistani province of Balochistan essentially corresponds to the dambura with its large anterior vertebrae . The damburaq accompanies the suroz , the name commonly used in Balochistan for the string sarinda , or the end-blown double flute donali .

The Hazara maintain predominantly vocal music with the dambura as their most important accompanying instrument. A legend told by a Hazarian poet explains the origin of the name dambura and makes the musical instrument appear as a Hazara own development. Accordingly, the dambura was originally called - around 2900 years ago - gawsar ("bull's head") after the shape of the body. When the musical instrument later became popular, it was given the name ghamkam ("liberator from worries") because it was able to lighten the mood. Once there was a boy and a girl who were in love but were not allowed to see each other. One day in the cold winter, the boy was playing ghamkam in front of a few men in the house . The girl was crazy about the boy and climbed the roof to listen to the music through a hole in the roof. She stayed there until she was finally frozen to death. After a bit of searching, they found her dead on the roof and named the musical instrument dambormona , which means "to take your life".

etymology

The four- stringed long-necked lute setār , which occurs mainly in Persian and Tajik music , takes its name from Persian like several other Afghan musical instruments . The name of the most famous lute played in Afghan music , rubāb, is derived from the Arabic consonant root rbb and is related to rabāb , the group of oriental pintle violins. Also dambura dates back to the Arab and hangs with tunbūr (plural tanābīr together), the early Islamic Arab default name for a lute. A lute called tanbūr was already in use in Sassanid times. The Arab philosopher al-Masʿūdī (around 895–957) considered the musical instrument tunbūr to be an invention of the sinful people of Lot from the biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorrah , from which the folk etymology of tann , "musical sound" and būr , "someone, who is doomed ”, revealed. According to the more accepted etymology tunbūr is made up of dum or dunba , "tail", and bara, "lamb". The late medieval Arabic authors used suffixes to differentiate the sounds according to their origin or quality, so according to al-Farabi (around 872–950) there was a tunbūr baghdādī and a tunbūr chorāsānī .

The word context of Arabic / Persian tunbūr includes the oriental long-necked tanbur , the tanburag of the Baluch , the tanburo in Sindh , the tandura in Rajasthan and the classical Indian tanpura . Word formations derived from the Arabic-Persian ṭanbūr could also denote drums, which has been preserved in French tambour , Italian tamburo and in German tambourine for frame drum . The name of the instrument reached the Balkans in numerous modifications via the Ottoman tambur (a) (like tambura in Macedonia) and directly via the Persian word to the north in several languages ​​of Central Asia. In Crimean Tatar the type of lute is also called dambura, in Kazan Tatar dumbra , in Mongolian dombura , in Kalmyk dombr, in Kyrgyz dombra and in Tajik dombrak. The Russian domra is a four- stringed lute with a round body. From an older three-string variant called dombra , the Russian triangular balalaika developed in the 18th century .

The Sanskrit word damaru ( Hindi ḍamrū ) describes a small rattle drum , which, according to its shape, belongs to the hourglass drums . There was an attempt to trace damaru together with tamburā , marathi for a kind of vina , to the Persian ṭanbūr / tunbūr . Since adoptions from Persian are practically only found in Central Indian languages ​​and the damaru has appeared as a god attribute since ancient Indian times, this origin appears to be unlikely. Conversely, the Persian word originally referred to a drum and was later extended to include stringed instruments.

Design

Dotār from Uzbekistan with frets and leg incrustations. Exhibition at the annual music festival Les Orientales in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil , France, 2013.

The Iranian-Afghan fretless long-necked lutes are on average 105 centimeters long and have 80 centimeters long strings. Younger versions are longer than older ones, and the installation of frets is also a development step.

Turkestan Dambura

The most widespread Turkestan dambura consists of three parts: a pear-shaped body carved from a piece of wood (Persian poscht , Uzbek kasi ), an attached narrow long neck (Persian and Uzbek dasta , "stem") and a glued-on flat wooden ceiling (Persian kāse , Uzbek kasnak ). The slim shape of the body, which tapers to a point at the lower end, is called sepāra. Mulberry wood is usually used for the three parts , in rare cases the neck is made of apricot, pine or walnut wood. Mulberry trees are widespread in northern Afghanistan and are valued for their edible fruits and large trees for providing shade. The leaves are fed to silkworms . Mulberry wood is the predominant material used for stringed instruments in Central Asia and, according to a source from the 17th century, was this in earlier times. The shape of the body is peeled off on the inside and rounded on the outside exclusively with the help of a dome (cross hatchet, kajkord ). Further processing of the outside of the body takes place with a rasp , whereby no value is placed on a particularly fine surface. The wall thickness in the middle of the body is around 1.6 centimeters. The wood is often not yet completely dry during processing and natural defects in the wood (adhesions, wormholes) are hardly taken into account. First, the body and neck are glued together, then the body and top .

Two anterior vertebrae (Persian gushak , "little ear", Uzbek kulaq ), shaped like a key screw , are inserted into central holes in the neck. They are about 9 and 18 centimeters from the top, sawed-off end at right angles. Instead of the gut strings that were common in the past, strings made of nylon are used today. The dambura probably never had strings made of silk like the dutār . The two strings are made of a nylon strand that runs from one of the pegs over a flat bridge set up on the wooden ceiling (Persian charak , Uzbek eischak , both means "little donkey") to a button on the lower edge of the body and back to the other peg leads. The lower string is called bam , the higher one is called zil . Their pitch is a fourth , rarely a third . On the underside of the body there is a sound hole with a diameter of 0.6 centimeters in the middle.

The total length of the dambura is between 100 and 110 centimeters, of which about 65 to 70 centimeters are on the neck. The body measures 21 to 26 centimeters in width and 13 to 19 centimeters in depth. In the 1970s, manufacturers stated that the damburas used to be smaller and sounded higher ( zil ). Some damburas are decorated on the neck or on the underside of the body with small incrustations of cattle bones, which often consist of three circles in a triangular pattern. The leg incrustation can be painted over with a bright red color. The large sound hole at the bottom is also decorated in this way in some cases. Small holes (usually four together in a diamond shape) symmetrically on both sides of the ceiling are decorative. The ceiling is too thin to be decorated with incrustations.

Damburas are made in small family workshops. The father bequeaths the craft to one of his sons. In the 1970s, a dambura manufacturer calculated five days for the production of an instrument, which was made to order by professional musicians and amateurs, and for sale in a shop in the city of Samangan , the center of Afghan dambura production.

Badakhshan Dambura

The main difference between the two damburas is that in the Badachshan lute the body and neck are made from one piece of wood and only the top is glued on. Only in the north-eastern Shughan district were some damburas made from three parts as an exception in the 1970s . The body of some Badachshan instruments is covered with a coarse ribbed pattern, which is not the case with the Turkestan damburas . The Badachschan dambura is significantly smaller and the size differences between individual specimens are considerable. The total length is between 68 and 78 centimeters, of which 39 to 49 centimeters are on the neck of five measured specimens. The body is between 12 and 20 centimeters wide and between 8 and 17 centimeters deep. The underside of the body is not semicircular, but forms a keel-shaped edge in the middle. Overall, the lutes in Badachschan are made more carefully, the wooden surface is smoother and the body wall is much thinner. The group of three to five small decorative holes in the top are arranged in the middle under the strings, a little above the bridge. There is no center for the production of damburas in Badachshan . This is partly due to the poor transport connections in the mountains, because many routes can only be tackled in several days with horses.

The description of the components essentially fits the Tajik dumbrak , although there were still many dumbraks with gut strings in Berg-Badachschan in the 1970s . Some names differ. The neck of the Badakhshan dambura, called dasta , is called biābun in the dumbrak . The string, tar, is called parda in Berg-Badachschan . Otherwise the names are the same, for example bam / zil for the low / high string.

Style of play

Fretless long-necked lutes make it easy to create micro-intervals and glissandi . The melody is usually only played on the higher string in northern Afghanistan and in Hazara music. The lower string produces the lowest note of the melody and, if struck regularly, a drone note . The Hazara always have the same deep keynote , while this can change in the music of the Uzbeks and Tajiks. Often the melody starts on the lower string and soon changes to the higher registers of the upper string. The open upper string becomes the keynote in many melodies. Regular recourse to the lower open string shows that both open strings then act as anchors of stability for the melody.

Rhythm patterns are often created by striking both open strings. The Hazara adapt the string tuning to the fourth or third to the respective song. With a pronounced downstroke, the Hazara tear the strings with the nails of all four fingers, the unstressed notes in between only with the index finger. In Badakhshan two to three fingers are used to strike the strings, in the Turkestan region it is only the index finger that plucks the strings. With the exception of the haraza, the players occasionally hit the ceiling rhythmically with their middle finger or thumb. Often a quick downstroke and upstroke are on the same note. The rhythms are mostly in 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/8, 7/8 time. A 7/8 measure is usually divided into 2 + 2 + 3 beats. Such asymmetrical rhythms are common when songs have been adopted from Tajik music.

The playing posture is different for the Afghan long-necked lute. The musician, sitting cross-legged on the floor, holds the tanbūr approximately vertically upwards, the dotār almost horizontally and the dambura in an oblique middle position.

The dambura is the main string instrument used by male musicians among the Uzbeks in the north. Women do not play string instruments here, but typically accompany their singing with the frame drum doira and the jaw harp chang . Wind instruments such as the cone oboe surnā , the Turkmen longitudinal flute tüidük or the transverse flute tula belong to their own musical genres and do not appear together with string instruments.

In northern Afghanistan, the music played in teahouses ( samowad ) was the most popular form of public music culture. There it was traditionally part of the entertainment program in the cities, especially on the one or two market days a week. There are no teahouses in the Hazara region. In Badachschan, the center of the live music scene was less teahouses than private and public events. In addition to the dambura, the music of the tea house ensembles includes the two-string string lute ghichak , the goblet drum zirbaghali , a pair of cymbals (Persian zang or tal , Uzbek tüsak ) and a string with bells ( zang-i kaftar , "dove bell"), which the dambura player ( damburatschi ) has tied around his right wrist. The two little idiophones are only known in the north. Dambura and ghichak are the style- defining instruments in tea house music. In Faizabad , the capital of Badachschan, there were teahouses in the 1970s in which a dambura was hung on the wall so that a guest could play it.

The professional musicians have a very low social status. The typical small ensemble in an Uzbek tea house includes a dambura player and two singers who sit cross-legged on either side of the instrumentalist. The singers keep the beat with the cymbals and often sing verses of mockery directed at the audience. As in the entire region, including the Tajik song genre falak , the verses consist of the rhyme scheme [aaba]. In Badachschan falaks can also be performed purely instrumentally with a small range of melodic variations. In Badachschan, sung falaks are accompanied by a dambura , a spike violin ghichak or a recorder tula .

A Turkmen dambura player in the 1970s, known as Aq Pischak ("white cat") for his ability to imitate animal sounds, performed as a comical entertainer ( maskharabaz , "fool player") in tea houses and at family gatherings . He gathered several musicians and always two Uzbek singers around him. On market days, the ensemble played almost the same repertoire of popular songs in tea houses from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The program mainly consisted of Uzbek dance songs, the verses of which consisted of improvised quatrains, as well as other melodies carried by Persian- and Uzbek-speaking traveling musicians, and songs that he listened to radio Kabul and Indian films. His income as entertainer at the family celebrations that take place in winter, often circumcision celebrations, was higher than in the tea houses. A rare form of tea house entertainment was the livelihood of a dambura player in the 1970s , who performed buz bazi ("goat game") by using a string on his right hand to make a puppet in the shape of a goat dance in front of him .

Music is a form of leisure entertainment , schauq . In the context of music, schauq refers to a group of amateur musicians ( schauqi ) who perform in front of a small group of friends. Mehmāni is an invitation to dinner in a private house, followed by music. At the schau nischini (“night get-together”), guests are invited to a house in the evening after dinner, where they drink tea, chat and some guests may play music. Such private events included and still do in some places, especially among the Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan, performances by dance boys in women's clothes. The performance, called bacha bazi (“boy play”), is accompanied by an ensemble with singing, dambura and the frame drum doira . The dambura player guides the dancer's movements with variations of the repetitive melodic motifs and with his tempo. Pashtuns used to hold boy dances in front of a large audience in public places. Sometimes professional musicians ( sazandeh ) appear instead of the amateurs . The distinction between amateurs and professional musicians is made for all areas of music.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ FM Karomatov, VA Meškeris, TS Vyzgo: Central Asia. In: Werner Bachmann (ed.): Music history in pictures . Volume II: Ancient Music. Delivery 9. Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1987, p. 26 f.
  2. ↑ Jean During, 2012, p. 3f
  3. ^ John Baily : Afghanistan . In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . 2nd edition, Volume 1. Macmillan Press, London 2001, p. 186
  4. ^ Felix Hoerburger: Long-necked lutes in Afghanistan. In: Asian Music , Vol. 6, No. 1/2 (Perspectives on Asian Music: Essays in Honor of Dr. Laurence ER Picken) 1975, pp. 28–37, here pp. 35f
  5. ↑ See Anderson Bakewell (recordings and text): Music of Makran. Traditional Fusion from Coastal Balochistan. (International Collection of the British Library Sound Archive) CD from Topic Records, London 2000
  6. ^ Mathieu Poitras: "Ma dambura ne ment pas": Musique et identité chez les Hazara d'Afghanistan. (PDF) University of Ottawa (Canada), 2015, p. 47f
  7. ↑ J.-C. Chabrier: Ṭunbūr. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Volume 10, Brill, Leiden 2000, p. 625
  8. ↑ Michael Knüppel: Once again on the possible origin of osm. tambur (a) ~ dambur (a) ~ damur (a) etc. In: Marek Stachowski (Ed.): Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia. Tape. 14. (PDF; 1.6 MB) Krakau 2003, pp. 219–226, here pp. 219 f., 222 f.
  9. ^ Jean During, 2012, p. 6
  10. ↑ Christer Irgens-Møller, 2007, p. 99
  11. ^ Mark Slobin, 1976, p. 163
  12. ↑ Christer Irgens-Møller, 2007, pp. 38, 100-105
  13. ^ Felix Hoerburger: Long-necked lutes in Afghanistan. 1975, p. 35
  14. ↑ Mark Slobin, 1976, pp. 74f
  15. ↑ Lorraine Sakata: The Concept of Musician in Three Persian-Speaking Areas of Afghanistan. In: Asian Music , Vol. 8, No. 1, (Afghanistan Issue) 1976, pp. 1–28, here p. 15
  16. ^ John Baily: Afghanistan . In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 2nd edition, Volume 1. Macmillan Press, London 2001, p. 189
  17. ^ Mark Slobin: Persian Folksong Texts from Afghan Badakhshan . In: Iranian Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, spring 1970, pp. 91-103, here p. 93
  18. ↑ Aq Pischak: Aqchai. Solo Dambura, recorded by Mark Slobin in 1968 in Aqcha. In: Afghanistan Untouched. Double CD, Traditional Crossroads (CD 4319), 2003, CD 1, track 13
  19. ↑ Mark Slobin, 1976, pp. 138f
  20. ↑ Mark Slobin: Buz-Baz: A Musical Marionette of Northern Afghanistan . In: Asian Music, Vol. 6, No. 1/2 ( Perspectives on Asian Music: Essays in Honor of Dr. Laurence ER Picken ) 1975, pp. 217-224
  21. ^ John Baily: Music of Afghanistan. Professional musicians in the City of Herat. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988, pp. 142f
  22. ^ Mark Slobin, 1976, p. 119