Kabak-Kemane

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Kabak kemâne ( Turkish , "pumpkin violin"), also kabak kemençe , kabak for short , is a rare three-string sting fiddle with a skin -covered calabash resonance body in Turkish folk music . The simple string instrument has ancient Turkish forerunners and is played in the villages in the south-west and south of Turkey .

Origin and Distribution

Azerbaijani kamancha in Heydar Aliyev Center , Baku.

A forerunner of the kabak has been known as ıklığ among the Turks, presumably since the 14th century . The word is derived from the hunting bow ok (spellings ak, ık or yık ). From oklu ( "with a bow") in were Ottoman writings spellings used in the sense of stringed instruments ıklığ and yıklığ . The Central Asian , bowed ghichak is also called ıklığ in Turkish translation in the middle of the 15th century . However, there is little in common between the elaborately manufactured short-necked lute with a wide, curved body made of wood and the simple Turkish instrument. In remote areas, the old name ıklığ survived into the 20th century. In 1940 ıhlığ a string instrument was reported in the villages around Kayseri and Malatya . In Eğirdir County , ıklığ was a similar tool used by cattle herders. The same linguistic background have the two-stringed horse-head fiddle igil in Tuva , which ikili in western Mongolia and the IIX the Khakassians .

Kabak means "pumpkin". Kemâne belongs to the context of keman , which used to mean "bow". In Turkish music today, the European violin is called keman . The Persian kamān generally refers to string instruments. In the Middle Ages, the Persian word seems to have supplanted the Turkish ıklığ . The spiked fiddle kamantsche (kamānča) played in Iran is comparable in shape to the kabak . In the word of the boat-shaped kemençe played on the Turkish Black Sea coast (exact name outside the Karadeniz kemençesi region ), as in kamancheh, there is the diminutive -çe. It differs from the fasıl kemençesi with a pear-shaped body. Fasıl is a term from classical Turkish music and refers to the field of application of this small three-stringed instrument.

In Turkey, the rare folk string lute kemânçe has three horsehair strings and a walnut body (ceviz) . The spiked fiddle with a round skin cover was described in the vicinity of the southeastern Anatolian cities of Siirt and Van . In this region the Turkmen villagers and nomads call two different self-made string instruments kemen and keman . The latter bears the name of the violin because of a certain similarity. Four strings run over the rectangular body made of one piece of walnut wood up to a pegbox curved backwards. There are two arched sound holes in the thin wooden ceiling. The kemen has a long rectangular body made from the wood of the mulberry tree, tapering in the shape of a bottle .

The English doctor Edward Browne (1644–1708, eldest son of the philosopher Thomas Browne ) traveled to Turkey around 1770. In his report there is an early illustration of a Turkish calabash fiddle. According to the accompanying commentary, a Roma ballad singer ( aşık ) accompanies himself on an instrument called “kimchè or kimchi”.

The distribution area of ​​the kabak includes the southwest Turkish provinces of Aydın , Denizli and Muğla as well as Şanlıurfa in the south on the Syrian border. It was played by the village and nomadic population on the summer pastures (yayla) ; like the shepherd's flute kaval , it was also part of the Yörük's instruments . In the rural areas of Aydın it was more popular than the saz . Since the 1960s, the kabak became known in other regions through radio broadcasts.

Design and style of play

The body of the kabak is made from a small pumpkin (Turkish su kabağı ) with a diameter of about 14 centimeters. The pumpkin harvest time is October to November. Traditionally, the pumpkin is hollowed out in the same way as is used to make a household jar. Remove the handle, pour water into the hole and add a few small stones. After three to four days, the pebbles detach the pulp from the skin when shaken, so that it can be poured off and fresh water refilled. This procedure is repeated for about a month.

Then a circular opening about nine centimeters in diameter is cut out on the opposite side, which is covered with a parchment-like animal skin instead of a blanket . The skin overlaps 15 to 20 millimeters at the edge. The membrane, which is initially wet, tauts as it dries after being nailed down with a double row of short metal pins. The approximately six centimeter large opening on the underside remains as a sound hole. A 46 centimeter long round rod made of pine wood (measured on one specimen) serves as the neck, which runs close to the skin. A nail driven through the body wall into the lower end of the rod serves as a spike with which the instrument is placed while playing. The stinger protrudes about ten centimeters. A slot at the top of the rod acts as a pegbox for two pegs on the side and one carved from wood on the opposite side.

The traditionally three strings (kiriş) run over a V-shaped bridge , which sits on the upper edge of the skin, to the spike on the underside. The neck has no frets . The 32 to 34 centimeter long gut strings are tuned to c 2 –g 1 –d 1 or c 2 –g 1 –g 1 or e 2 –b 1 –e 1 . As with Turkish stringed instruments, the top one is generally called zil . Since the end of the 20th century, kabaks with four strings, some of which are made of steel, have also been manufactured professionally and in a more complex manner. The strongly curved arch consists of a piece of branch that is held in shape by the horse hair covering.

In the typical playing position corresponding to the viola da gamba , the kabakçi sits on a chair with his left foot crossed over his right knee. The sting of the kabak rests on the right shoe, the peg box ends at the level of the left shoulder. The player holds the bow from the underside with his right hand, with three fingers on the cover and able to regulate the tension. Since the neck is not placed on the shoulder, the left hand can only shorten the strings in the first position, which limits the range .

The kabak is mostly played by men as a soloist or as a vocal accompaniment for entertainment in the house. The free rhythmic melodies in the style of uzun hava (“long melody”) predominate here . Occasionally the instrument is also used in dance music, whose ostinate rhythms belong to the style kırık hava (“broken melody”), outdoors on the fairground. Occasions are weddings and other family celebrations. A typical male dance for western Turkey is the zeybek . In the alternation between men and women, the kabak sometimes takes on the antiphonal role of women.

Further lute instruments with pumpkin resonance bodies

The name kabak is also passed down for a plucked one-piece lute from a bottle gourd, which also forms the neck. Two or three plant fibers serve as strings for this toy. Kabak sazı is a simple plucked adult lute consisting of a pumpkin with a wooden stick as a string carrier.

The Turkmen of the eastern Taurus Mountains use hegit, egit or eğit to designate a bowed calabash lute . Hegit is not a Turkish word. A copy of this three-string fiddle came to the Adana Museum at the beginning of the 20th century . The skin cover (deri) is attached over an elliptical opening. With this special shape there is no neck, a wooden stick runs in the body to the upper end of a bottle-shaped calabash with a neck bent backwards. Two vertebrae (burgu) are attached to the side and one to the top. The sting barely protrudes from the underside. In Hungarian , hegedü refers to the modern violin. The spelling hegedö has been known for Hungarian lute instruments since the 14th century. One can only speculate about a linguistic connection and a common origin.

literature

  • Laurence Picken : Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey. Oxford University Press, London 1975, pp. 186-193

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Picken, p. 192f
  2. ↑ Picken, pp. 193f
  3. ↑ Picken, pp. 337-339
  4. ↑ Klaus-Peter Brenner: Village Music from the Bodrum District, Southwest Turkey: Style studies based on the Reinhard Collection in 1968 and own field recordings 1984–86. Lit, Münster 1997, p. 48, ISBN 978-3894734428
  5. ^ Kurt Reinhard : The music care of Turkish nomads. In: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Vol. 100, H. 1/2, 1975, pp. 115–124, here p. 119
  6. ↑ Picken, p. 157
  7. ↑ Picken, pp. 200-202
  8. ↑ Picken, pp. 196-199, 323