Dammam (drum)

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Passion play on 10th Muharram 1435 AH (November 13th 2013) in Nishapur , Iran.

Dammam ( Arabic الدمام, DMG ad-dammām ) is a large double-headed cylinder drum or frame drum that is played by Shiites in Iraq and Iran during religious ceremonies. The dammām is usually struck with the left hand and a bent stick in the right hand, especially during passion plays during the mourning month of Muharram or to wake the believers early in the morning in Ramadan .

Origin and Distribution

Two-headed cylinder drums, which are worn by standing musicians on a belt on the hip and played with both hands, are first known in the Middle East , according to illustrations, in the Neo-Assyrian period (first half of the 1st millennium BC). In Iraq the dammām is one of the drums commonly known as tabl , which can be tubular drums or kettle drums . Medieval authors only excluded the flat frame drums ( duff ) from this classification. The grammarian al-Mufaddal ibn Salama († around 904) mentions the single-skin beaker drum kabar (forerunner of today's darbuka ) and the double- skin hourglass drum kūba in addition to the two-headed cylinder drum tabl . Cylinder drums, along with the small pair of kettle drums naqqāra (Pl. Nuqqāirāt ), the medium-sized kūs (Pl. Kūsāt ), gongs ( tusūt ), bells ( jalādschil ) and various wind instruments belonged to the medieval, up to 40 men strong, military representation the rulers served. Their splendid appearance is particularly recorded in the book illustrations of the painter Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti from 1237 in Baghdad about the Maqāmāt ("assemblies") of al-Hariri .

In today's classical Iraqi music ( Maqām repertoire), the "Baghdad Ensemble" (playing the song accompaniment al-schālghī al-Baghdādī ) with the melodic instruments santur (hammered dulcimer) and Juza (four-stringed spiked fiddle with Kokosnussresonator) and the rhythm instruments tabla (name of Beaker drum darbuka ), duff (frame drum) and naqqāra (pair of kettle drums). Cylinder drums do not appear in classical music. In folk music, various drums are used to accompany singing and dancing, such as the double-headed round frame drum tabl , which is called tabl al-ardah when it is used for the Arab group dance of men, ardah, which is cultivated in southern Iraq . The ensembles tabl wa surnā (“drum and cone oboe”) are on the road throughout the country for festive entertainment , to which the ensembles davul - zurna in Turkey and tapan --zurla correspond in the Balkans .

The same types of drums - frame drums, cup drums, kettle drums, and cylinder drums - also appear in Iranian music . Barrel drums, hourglass drums and large kettle drums, which are known from pre-Islamic illustrations, probably disappeared from the Iranian highlands after the 14th century . The doholak barrel drum was preserved in Balochistan , while all three drum types mentioned are widespread further east in India. On the other hand, the tombak beaker drum played with the hands and the duff frame drum are an essential part of classical music in Iran .

Functionally, folk music drums played with sticks are distinguished from this. The sticks are usually bent at the end and wrapped in fabric. In addition to the dammām , the drums used regionally in folk music include the large double-headed cylinder drum dohol (in India dhol ) and small kettle drums played individually or in pairs. Apart from being a general term for drums, tabl can mean a small cylinder drum that is struck on both heads with sticks.

Dammāma used to be called a small double-headed drum in southern Iran or a kettle drum. Another name for dammāma was dabdaba , and dabdabi used to be called the small cylindrical drum doli in Georgia.

Design

Dammām and zang in Iran

The body of the dammām consists of a thin-walled, hollowed out wooden trunk or a metal tube. The two goat skin skins are tied to thick palm fiber cords that are braced against each other via an often Y-shaped, continuous lacing. The size of the drum and the type of lacing can be varied over a wide range. To change the sound of the drum, either the ends of the lacing are tied again or a secondary lacing that is attached across the middle is tightened. As with the bass drum , modern drums with a metal body have clamping rings that are adjusted with clamping screws. The musician playing while standing holds the cylinder drum hanging on a belt over his left shoulder horizontally or inclined slightly downward to the left in front of him at hip height and beats the left skin with his hand and the right with a bent stick.

In a narrower sense, dammām, specified as ad-dammām al-mudalaʾ, denotes a large frame drum with a body height of only nine to twelve centimeters and a five, seven or octagonal shape. This drum hangs on a belt around the neck horizontally in front of the player's stomach, who hits it on the top with a stick in his right hand. With his left hand he holds the drum by the frame or the belt.

A similar flat, but smaller, double-headed drum is the mirwas (Pl. Marāwīs ) played in the Arab countries on the Persian Gulf to accompany songs - among other things in the urban singing style sawt .

Style of play

Modern drum with turnbuckles at an Ashura procession in Bahrain .

The dammām is primarily associated with the Ashura rites, in which groups of Shiite men lament the martyrdom of Imam Husain , accompanied by drum beats, with long knives on their heads or with a bundle of knife blades ( zanjir ) on the Bring bloody cuts to the back. The latter are the zanjir zanan; Believers who hit their chests with their fists are called sineh zanan. Regionally, the knife blades are being replaced by less damaging iron chains. For the believers, these scourges are an expression of their grief and symbolic sympathy for the tragic fate of Husain. Often several drums wrapped in green cloths and one or two pair of cymbals ( cymbals , Persian zang , Arabic sandsch, zanj ) are beaten while the men are flagellated. If women are present, they watch the action from the roadside.

In the north-east Iranian city of Mashhad , one of the largest religious centers of Shiite Islam, believers from large parts of Iran come together on Ashura, the tenth day of the month of Muharram , and form a crowd that moves around the Imam Reza shrine , accompanied by acoustics of drums, pair cymbals and trumpets. In Bushehr on the Persian Gulf, it is part of the tradition of the ritual that takes place on the 9th of Muharram that a procession marches out from all the city quarters, which includes a group of instruments with eight cylinder drums , eight pair of cymbals and instead of the trumpet a traditional conical long trumpet buq (cf. buki ) . When the groups meet in a central location, it is up to the buq players to coordinate the rhythm among themselves.

Oversized modern frame drum. Muharram in Nishapur

In passion plays ( taschābah ) in the first ten days of the month of Muharram, the historical events that led to Hussain's death are staged with actors in costumes and horses in front of the scenery. Ta'zieh is a form of passion play . The characterization of each main character includes certain melody lines, rhythms and musical instruments. Drums, cymbals and trumpets bring the atmosphere of the battlefield of Karbala near. In the past, in some places in Iran, the drums, beaten as loud as possible, were used in a kind of religious competition to make one of the groups performing Ta'zieh appear even more impressive compared to other, hostile religious groups.

In addition, drumbeats can convey a strong emotional expression in very different emotional states. Because of this fundamental openness to interpretation, drums are suitable as diverse carriers of meaning in rituals; with the restriction that some drums may only be used for certain rituals due to a meaning assigned to them. In India, the Shiite events in the month of Muharram are not only cultivated by the Shiite community and sometimes have the character of a folk festival. The Indian Muslims have used the flat kettle drum tasa and the large double-headed tubular drum dhol as a pair of drums in the mourning ritual of Muharram (in India tatbir ) since at least the middle of the 19th century .

In the Persian Gulf, some cultural forms of African immigrants and former slaves have been preserved in the south of Iraq and Iran, in particular dances and musical styles. In the Iraqi Basra this includes the possession ceremony an-nūbān with relatively benign spirits, for which African drums and the veil tanbūra, which also comes from Africa, are used. Another possession ceremony from East Africa and common on both sides of the Persian Gulf is tsar . The damaging spirit, which is understood as a kind of wind, must be identified with its personality and its country of origin in the tsar healing ritual. Colorfully dressed dancers also perform during the multi-day ceremony. In the south of Iran, those involved speak Persian with sprinkles in Arabic and Swahili . In addition to the large dammām , the medium-sized gap dohol and the small kesar are also used.

In Bushehr there were quite a few African singers who performed at family celebrations. The African influence was also noticeable in the rituals of women on Muharram. Remarkably, until the mid-20th century, women played the drum dammām in two mosques in Bushehr . They also practiced sineh zanan on Muharram until around this time, holding each other's shoulders and moving in circles like the men.

literature

  • Scheherazade Qassim Hassan: Dammām. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 2, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 11

Web links

Commons : Dammam  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Konrad Volk: Improvised Music in Ancient Mesopotamia? In: Walter Fähndrich (Ed.): Improvisation II. (Conference reports of the international conference for improvisation, Lucerne 1990) Amadeus, Winterthur 1994, pp. 160–202, here p. 164
  2. ↑ Henry George Farmer : Ṭabl . In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition , Vol. 10, Brill, Leiden 2000, p. 32
  3. ^ Henry George Farmer: Music History in Pictures. Volume 3: Music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Delivery 2. Islam . Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1966, pp. 26, 76
  4. ↑ Scheharazade Qassim Hassan: Iraq: II. Art music and related traditions. 1. Iraqi art music ('maqām'). In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Vol. 12, 2001, p. 548
  5. ^ Jean During: Drums in Iranian Music. The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies
  6. ↑ Scheherazade Qassim Hassan, 2014, p. 11
  7. ^ Ulrich Wegner, Poul Rovsing Olsen: Arabian Gulf. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Vol. 1, 2001, p. 796
  8. ↑ تطبير بين الحرمين - كربلاء 2016. Youtube video (Shiite mourning ceremony in Karbala )
  9. ↑ Stephen Blum: Iran III: Ritual and popular traditions. Islamic. 2. Ritual and ceremony. (ii) Nowheh. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 12, 2001, pp. 538f
  10. ↑ See Hossein Mirjafari, JR Perry: The Ḥaydarī-Nicmatī Conflicts in Iran. In: Iranian Studies, Vol. 12, No. 3/4, summer – autumn 1979, pp. 135–162, here p. 153
  11. ^ Richard K. Wolf: Embodiment and Ambivalence: Emotion in South Asian Muharram Drumming. In: Yearbook for Traditional Music, Vol. 32, 2000, pp. 81–116, here pp. 82, 90
  12. ↑ Neil van der Linden: Zār . In: Richard C. Jankowsky (Ed.): Bloomsberg Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. Vol. 10: Genres: Middle East and North Africa. Bloomsberg, New York 2015, p. 138
  13. ↑ Anna Vanzan: Mourning is Beautiful: Ta'ziyeh and Gender Affirmation in South Iran. In: Komunikacija i kultura online, Vol. 6, No. 6, 2015, pp. 305–327, here p. 314