Damburag

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The Baloch singer Mulla Kamal Khan (1941–2010) plays damburag.

Damburag , dambūrag, also tanburaq, dambiro, is a two- to four-stringed long-necked lute that is played in the folk music of the Baluchi in the Pakistani province of Balochistan and the Iranian province of Baluchistan . The damburag is similar to the tanburo played in Sindh , Pakistan , but has no frets in some regions . While the tanburo only accompanies the religious chants of the Sufis , the damburag plays the rhythmic accompaniment of the melody-leading strings suroz ( sorud ) and as a melody instrument in small ensembles in popular music . It is also part of the music used in obsessional rituals to put the patient and healer into a trance.

Origin and Distribution

The name damburag refers to the origin of the lute instrument from the Arab-Persian area. It goes back to Persian tanbūr and Arabic tunbūr , which first appeared in Arabic literature in the 7th century for a musical instrument. From tunbūr , which is related to the Sumerian word pan-tur ("small bow"), the lyre tanbura and otherwise several long-necked lutes from the Balkans ( tambura ), Caucasus ( panduri , pondur ), from Turkey ( tanbur ) and from the Kurdish provinces in Iran ( tembur ) to northern Afghanistan ( dambura ) and the northern Pakistani district of Kohistan ( NWFP , three-stringed danburo ), which are used as melody instruments in instrumental ensembles or for melodic vocal accompaniment. It was not until the Islamic conquests in the Middle Ages that Persian names for musical instruments came to India. The long-necked lute, which is related to the tunbūr name in South Asia, are not used as melody-leading instruments, but rather, in the case of the tanpura, known from classical Indian music, ensure a drone that is not rhythmically defined . The presumed forerunners of the tanpura in Indian folk music, such as the tanburo in Sindh, the tandura in Rajasthan and other tamburi, tambura or similarly named variants in southern India, are primarily used for rhythmic singing. The damburag , which occurs at the geographical limit of the playing styles of this long-necked lute type, is used both for melodic and rhythmic vocal accompaniment.

Design and style of play

Baloch girl in Pakistan with a three-string damburag .

The British colonial official M. Longworth Dames described the Baluch dambiro in 1906 as a long-necked lute with a deep, bulbous, pear-shaped body that is carved out of one piece of wood and has a flat wooden top. He describes the lute as slim, elegant and longer than a sitar , but made simpler than this. In its day the instrument had four strings made of sheep intestine. Today's instruments are usually strung with three (two to four) strings, which lead to large anterior vertebrae at the end of a long, narrow neck via a bridge loosely placed on the ceiling in the lower area. The body shape is similar to the Afghan dotar . In some areas of Balochistan the damburag has frets ; the instruments played in the Makran region on the coast are fretless.

While the tanburo in Sindh rests vertically in the lap of the musician sitting cross- legged on the floor and leans his neck on the left shoulder, the damburag lies on the musician's right knee and is held almost horizontally or slightly to the side with the left hand. Depending on the melodic or rhythmic playing style, the strings are plucked individually with the fingers of the right hand, as is the case with the guitar, or they are torn simultaneously by moving the hand quickly up and down.

Ballads

According to Dame's description, the stanzas of the songs sung by the Baluch consisted of lines in a predominantly constant meter and with missing or only random end rhymes. The songs were always performed by the professional domb singers who accompanied each other on the sarinda (meaning the Pakistani version suroz ) and the dambiro . Nothing has changed in this ensemble line-up to this day. Typically the suroz plays the melody and the damburag accompanies with a percussive touch technique. In the Makran, the suroz, damburag , the doneli double flute and the bansari transverse flute are often played by traditional professional musicians; in the rest of the province these instruments are reserved for high-class Baluch.

The domb , as they are called in the east of Balochistan, are called pahlawān in the rest of the region , form a socially low- ranking community of professional traveling musicians and traditionally belong to the lūrī caste. They are the main bearers of the musical tradition in the predominantly semi-desert landscape of Balochistan, where the rural population lives in date palms and widely scattered tribes raise cattle. The songs are usually associated with certain annual festivals such as the date and wheat harvest and with transitional celebrations, especially weddings, births and circumcision. The two main genres of song usually accompanied by a suroz ( āwāz, plural āwāzī ) are love songs ( līku ) and ballads ( dāstanāgah ). Several song texts are often sung over one or two free rhythmic, melodic phrases. In contrast to a classic raga , the melodies are not strictly based on a modal framework. The last phrase leads to a stressed tonic .

A suroz and one or two damburag accompany the singer in a genre of ballads: the epic songs ( schēr, also schayr ), which deal with historical events, social issues or love stories. The schēr contain the orally transmitted narrative tradition of the Baluch, some of the content of which can be traced back to the 15th century. The songs were composed by Baluchi of the upper social classes, they are performed by the lower class of wandering musicians. The poet-singer ( schāʿer , Arabic schāʿir ) occurs mostly at meetings of important personalities and occasionally at weddings. The rhythms are in 6/8, 10/8, 7/8 or 4/4 time.

Healing ritual

Zikr dance ritual at night by a fire outside a village in Balochistan. Illustration in A ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan, 1891, by travel writer Harry de Windt (1856–1933).

With the conquest by the Ghaznavids around the year 1000, Islam in the form of Sufi currents reached the region. Various rituals ( zikr, from Arabic dhikr ) of the Sufi orders, which are still widespread in Pakistan today, lead to ecstasy through music (Arabic samāʿ ) or dance. A mystical sect of the Baluch on the Makran coast, which has existed since the 15th century and venerates its founder Said Mahmud of Jaunpur as Mahdi , is called Zikri after its ritual practice consisting of choral singing and dance. In addition to being used for a mystical experience in religious cult, music is also used by the Baluch in healing rituals to drive out evil spirits. In a kind of healing ritual, a spirit called guat ("wind" or "spirit") is supposed to be expelled from the patient . This invisible guat attacks the heart, confuses the mind and, it is said, causes infertility, depression, tetanus, jaundice and more, especially in women and children. In the possession ceremony, the healer causes the patient to enter a state of trance. This requires a music ensemble that plays a melody-leading fiddle suroz and a damburag that produces a rhythmic drone. The ensemble plays guati melodies one after the other until the right melody for the sick guat is found. Many of the melodies are dedicated to Lal Shahbaz Qalandar , a Sufi mystic of the 13th century. Like the patient, the healer is in a state of trance when he makes contact with the guat in search of a cure.

Such healing ceremonies go back to black African influence. After the Middle Ages, African seafarers and traders came via Zanzibar and Oman as well as slaves from East Africa to the west coast of India and to Balochistan. In India the descendants of the African immigrants or slaves form the separate group of the Siddis , in Balochistan, on the other hand, they are fully integrated into the culture and society of the Baluch - together with the tsar cult they brought with them . The guat spirit cult could have been introduced from Tanzania via the tsar cult .

Another cult of obsession that shows a stronger Islamic influence than guati is called damāli . The spirits involved are jinns and in the trance the souls of deceased Muslim saints are conjured up. In addition to the healing ritual, in which the patient is put into a trance, there is a ritual in which the healer makes contact with spirits without the patient's trance and another ritual which leads to a religious trance state without the patient being involved. The last two forms of ritual are not cures. Their music group consists of a suroz and sometimes a double flute donali and a damburag as a rhythm instrument.

After Karachi emigrated Baloch who live there in the densely populated district Lyari, invite traditional musicians for trance rituals such DAMALI, but rarely for weddings or celebrations entertainment a. If the singing in Karachi is accompanied by suroz and damburag as well as by the double-headed cylinder drum dukkur , which is beaten with the hands, and chinchir by finger cymbals , then this is a concession to the cultural environment in the big city.

Further ensemble line-ups

Other Pakistani stringed instruments that are also played by Baluch are the plucked rubāb , known mainly from Afghanistan, and the board zither with keyboard banjo ( benjo ). The interplay of sorud and damburag to accompany the song has Central Asian parallels and corresponds in the Turkmen to the string and plucked instrument combination ghichak and dotar as well as in the Azerbaijani music kamancha and tar .

Musicians recognized as masters in Pakistani Balochistan, like musicians of classical Indian music, belong to a certain teaching tradition ( gharana ). In contrast to dotar players, who occasionally act in groups in Iranian music , professional musicians from Baluch reject extended ensembles. Exceptions are ensembles for light entertainment styles with, for example, the fiddles ghichak and soruz , the plucked rubāb and the zither banjo as melodic instruments, in which a damburag and a double-headed tubular drum doholak provide the rhythm. The general name for this popular music is sawt. According to the song lyrics ( schayyānī sawt ), they are happy love songs. The musicians ( sawtī ) play at weddings, circumcisions and holidays. A genre of songs that is mainly used at weddings is called nāzēnk ( nazink, "adoration", "praise"). Here the musicians pay homage to the bride and groom, as well as the newborn baby in the first six nights after the birth. Lādō ( lahro ) is another ceremonial song genre for weddings.

Discography

  • Anderson Bakewell (recordings and text booklet): Music of Makran. Traditional Fusion from Coastal Balochistan. (International Collection of the British Library Sound Archive) CD from Topic Records, London 2000

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ J.-C. Chabrier: Ṭunbūr. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Volume 10, Brill, Leiden 2000, p. 625
  2. ^ Instruments of Pakistan. ( Memento of November 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) American Institute of Pakistan Studies
  3. ↑ Alastair Dick: Tambura. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 4, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 701
  4. ↑ Mansel Longworth Dames: Popular poetry of the Baloches. Vol. 1, David Natt, London 1906, p. Xxxiv ( at Internet Archive ). Adapted from: Henri Field: An Anthropological Reconnaissance in West Pakistan, 1955. With appendixes on the archeology and natural history of Baluchistan and Bahawalpur. The Peabody Museum, Cambridge 1959, p. 72 ( at Internet Archive ). Also adopted as the keyword Dambiro. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 2, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 11
  5. ↑ Mansel Longworth Dames, 1906, pp. Xxix, xxxiv
  6. ↑ Anderson Bakewell: Music of Makran. CD, booklet p. 6f
  7. ↑ Sabir Badalkhan: Balochistan. In: Alison Arnold (Ed.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Vol. 5: South Asia: The Indian Subcontinent. Routledge, London 1999, p. 776
  8. ^ Regula Qureshi: Pakistan. 7. Musical idioms. (iv) Baluchi music. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Vol. 18, 2001, p. 924
  9. ↑ Peter J. Claus, Sarah Diamond, Margaret Ann Mills: South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. Routledge, New York 2003, p. 42
  10. ^ MT Massoudieh: Baluchistan iv. Music of Baluchistan . In: Encyclopædia Iranica
  11. ^ A b Jean During: Power, Authority and Music in the Cultures of Inner Asia. In: Ethnomusicology Forum, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Music and Identity in Central Asia) November 2005, pp. 143-164, here p. 157
  12. ^ Harry de Windt: A ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan. Chapman and Hall, London 1891 ( online at Projekt Gutenberg )
  13. ↑ See Stephen Pastner, Carroll McC. Pastner: Aspects of Religion in Southern Baluchistan. In: Anthropologica, New Series, Vol. 14, No. 2, 1972, pp. 231-241
  14. ↑ Hiromi Lorraine Sakata: Spiritual Music and Dance in Pakistan . In: Etnofoor, Vol. 10, No. 1/2 (Muziek & Dans) 1997, pp. 165-173, here pp. 169f
  15. ↑ See Helene Basu: Music and the Formation of Sidi Identity in Western India. In: History Workshop Journal, No. 65, Spring 2008, pp. 161–178
  16. ^ Jean During: African Winds and Muslim Djinns. Trance, Healing, and Devotion in Baluchistan. In: Yearbook for Traditional Music , Vol. 29, 1997, pp. 39-56, here pp. 40f
  17. ↑ Anderson Bakewell: Music of Makran. CD, title 1, booklet p. 8
  18. ↑ Zahida Raji Raees: The Baluchi Zahirig music.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Forum post, October 17, 2008@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / baask.com  
  19. ^ Jean During, 2005, p. 155