Ektara (lute instrument)

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Ektara ( Persian , hindi ek târ, "one string", panjabi ਇਕ ਤਾਰਾ), also ektar, ekanada, is a one or two-stringed long-necked spit lute in popular North Indian music . On the fretboard-less stringed instrument , the singer plays the rhythm or a drone to accompany the mostly religious songs.

Origin and Distribution

The oldest Indian stringed instruments, collectively referred to in the Vedas as vina , were musical bows from which bow harps developed, as they were depicted on stone reliefs at places of worship up to the 7th century. After this time the bow harps disappeared from India, their shape was only preserved in the Burmese saung gauk . Single -stringed rod zithers with a straight wooden or bamboo rod as a string carrier have been known since the 6th century . In the music theory Sangita Ratnakara , written by Sarngadeva in the 13th century, three types of stick zithers are distinguished: The ektantri vina was fretless, its string was shortened by a sliding piece of wood. A figure can be found in the anonymous pamphlet Ġunyat al-munya about Indian music, written in Gujarat in Urdu in 1374/75 . A distant descendant of her is the gottuvadyam played in South India . The other two stick zithers, kinnari vina and alapini vina , had calabashes attached to the stick as resonators. This design is still preserved today in the rudra vina , whereas the Saraswati vina and the drone instrument tanpura have developed into long-necked lutes with a neck attached to the body . With the medieval names nakuli (with two strings) and tritantri (with three strings) it is not always clear whether a stave zither or a lute instrument was painted.

The third possibility of connecting the string carrier and the sound box with each other is represented by the spit lute, which is already depicted on ancient Egyptian murals. This design, which is simpler than the neck lute, is widespread in folk musical instruments; in West Africa, for example, the ngoni corresponds to this type. In India, fretless long-necked skewers are consistently accompanying instruments for religious or entertaining songs, as they provide a drone tone and rhythm at the same time.

The north Indian ektara and its south Indian counterpart ekanada, similar to the spit- lute, are known under various regional names in India. In the bhangra music of Punjab the tumbi is played. In Nepal , ekar is a single-stringed lute with a long neck and a resonance body made of pumpkin or a coconut shell. This also includes the one or two-string yaktaro in the Pakistani region of Sindh and the single-string ramsagar from Gujarat. With the tuila from Orissa, the string holder is not in the resonance body, the tuila is a musical stick with attached calabash and its shape corresponds to the medieval images of the ekatantri. Stitched lutes that are not plucked, but rather bowed with a bow are just as common: in Gujarat and Rajasthan the ravanahattha with two melody and up to a dozen or more sympathetic strings, in Odisha the three-string banam , in Madhya Pradesh the three-string bana and the single-stringed pena in Manipur .

Several long-necked lutes, simpler versions of the tanpura, have the same function in folk music : the one meter long dotara, played in Assam and Bengal , has two strings (cf. the Iranian lute dotar ). Assam's most popular plucked instrument is the slightly longer four-string tokari .

The tun tune (also tun-tina ) from central India and Maharashtra are among the stringed instruments that are mainly used rhythmically and hardly produce clear pitches . The string stretches from the edge of an approximately 25 centimeter long wooden cylinder, which is covered on the underside with a membrane, to the end of a 70 centimeter long bamboo stick attached to the side. The tun tune is an intermediate stage to the plucking drums, which are also called ektara in India , but are based on a different type of sound generation.

Design and style of play

Tumbi and the bamboo double flute alghoza in Punjab

The ektara consists of a 100 centimeter long or longer string carrier made of wood or bamboo, which is put through a round calabash and a short piece protrudes at the lower end. A hole in the top of the sound box is covered with an animal skin glued or nailed to the edge. The string leads from an upstanding wooden vertebra at the end of the string carrier over a bridge made of wood or bone, which is located in the middle of the membrane, to a knot at the protruding end below.

In the south of Bihar the ektara has a bamboo stick that is about 85 centimeters long and two to five centimeters thick. The pumpkin resonator is about 15 to 21 centimeters in diameter. The membrane spans a circle of eleven centimeters and is made from air-dried goat or lizard skin. The one or two brass strings are about 55 centimeters long between the peg and bridge. The upper end of the bamboo tube is decorated with peacock feathers, which are fastened with colored strips of paper or string wrapped around the tube.

The ektara is played by singers of religious songs (commonly called bhajans ). Often it is wandering begging musicians who belong to the Hindu sadhus or the Muslim fakirs . The singer holds the instrument vertically in front of him with one hand on the bamboo tube or swings it over his shoulder while plucking the string with the index finger of the same hand. During dance movements he supports the body with the other hand, occasionally he holds small bells in his free hand with which he strikes the underside of the instrument.

The spit lutes are typical accompanying instruments used by male singers; they are also used in rural group dances by Adivasis and in the mardana jhumar ("men's jhumar") in Jharkhand . During this martial dance at the end of the harvest season, men swing swords over their heads. The loud music accompanying mardana jhumar can include the ektara, the double reed instrument shehnai , the cylinder drum dhol , the kettle drum nagara , brass cymbals ( jhanjh ) and kartal (bamboo or wood rattle ).

In the Thar desert in western Rajasthan , two or three women perform the lively teratali dance , with bronze cymbals ( manjiras ) hanging in several places on their bodies . They are accompanied by two men who play and sing ektara .

literature

  • Carol M. Babiracki, Alastair Dick, Mireille Helpers: Ektār. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Vol. 8. Macmillan Publishers, London 2001, pp. 51f.
  • Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva: Musical Instruments. National Book Trust, New Delhi 1977, p. 75.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sangita Ratnakara. Indianet zone
  2. ↑ Ekatantri, String Instrument. IndianetZone
  3. ↑ rudravina.com (illustration of an eka tantri in Ġunyat al-munya , 1374/75)
  4. ↑ Rudra Vina. The History. rudravina.com
  5. ↑ Vina . In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present. Sachteil 9, 1998, col. 1540.
  6. ↑ Deva, p. 88
  7. ↑ Dilip Ranjan Barthakur: The Music and Musical Instruments of North Eastern India. Mittal Publications, New Delhi 2003, pp. 130f.
  8. ↑ Deva, p. 73.
  9. ^ Folk Dances of Jharkhand. viewpointjharkhand.com
  10. ↑ Sunil Sehgal: Encyclopaedia of Hinduism. Vol. 5. Sarup & Sons, New Delhi 1999, pp. 1291f, ( online at Google Books )