Khaen

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A khaen player in Isan

The khaen , also kaen, khène or khen ( Thai แคน , Laotian : ແຄນ , pronunciation: [ kʰɛːn ]), is a woodwind instrument and belongs to the group of Asian mouth organs .

The khaen is the characteristic melody instrument and the national musical symbol of the Lao in Laos and in the Isan region bordering to the south (northeastern Thailand). It is a pierced tongue instrument whose pipes are connected to a small wooden reservoir into which air is blown. The functional principle corresponds to that of the Chinese mouth organ sheng and the Japanese shō .

Origin and Distribution

The most original form of a mouth organ is known from the mountains of Chittagong (among the Mro and Kumi people). Their individual man-high bamboo pipes had a tongue in the middle that was located inside a bottle gourd. Several wind instruments, each able to play one note, together formed the musical instrument. In the case of mouth organs, the individual pipes were later combined into choirs and thus playable for a single person. Close relatives, who look like precursors to the khaen , are the sompoton, played in Sabah , and the mbuat from North Vietnam, which is hardly in use anymore . In the mountains of South Vietnam, among the Ma minority people, the kom boat calabash mouth organ together with the bamboo zither roding (related to the East Indonesian sasando ) are among the most popular musical instruments. The same mouth organ is called nboat among the Rhade people further north . The western border of the distribution area is northeast India, where the rasem ( gosem ) is played in Tripura .

The noun khaen has no further meaning, its formation is probably owed to a pronunciation in the regional Tai languages that is based on euphony (melodious sound) .

Design

A Mangkong man in Savannakhet plays khaen .

The khaen than Wind chamber no pumpkin calabash , but a carved wooden chamber is blown in from the side and are powered by the all pipes evenly with air. The dark red solid wood of the wind chamber comes from a Pterocarpus species ( P. cambodianus, P. indicus or P. Macrocarpus ). The tubes, lying next to each other in two rows, consist of a very thin type of bamboo ( mia hia ) that grows up to three and a half meters high . They are sealed airtight on the wind chamber with black wax ( sut ). In the khaen , the tubes run through the wind chamber, which is about a quarter of the length. The Sompoton has a bundle of tubes protruding upwards on one side, while the Mbuat has the tubes divided into two bundles diverging at an acute angle.

The tongues of the khaen inside the wind chamber are made of metal, usually bronze ( thong luang , "yellow metal"). A tongue is required for each pipe, for which a certain bronze coin is melted and then knocked out as thin as paper to a width of 4.5 millimeters. The tongues are further shaped by hammering in the cold state. This is the only way for the metal to achieve the desired hardness and elasticity.

To prevent all pipes from sounding at the same time, there is a hole in each pipe that destroys the pipe's resonance. In order to set the tongue in this tube vibrating, this hole must be closed with the finger. The necessary draft is created by blowing in or out with the mouthpiece. The tongues are approximately symmetrical so that the same pitch is achieved in both blowing directions. The sound frequency depends on the shape of the tongue and the length of the tube. Fine tuning is done through one or mostly two longitudinal slots in the tubes, which determine their effective acoustic length.

The most common khaen is the khaen paet , it has a total of 16 pipes in two rows and a length of 60 to 130 cm, whereby the longest pipes are usually 100 cm in length. The additional designations come from the Thai language and correspond to the number of pipes per row, i.e. paet, other spelling paat : "eight". The small khaen hok with 6 pipes is seen more as a toy and used for decoration. The older khaen jet has 14 pipes. The 180 cm long, deep-sounding khaen gao with 18 pipes was the most unusual instrument and has disappeared for practical reasons. It took too much air to breathe and was difficult to transport. Khaen are particularly produced in the northeastern Thai province of Roi Et .

Use and style of play

The khaen is the main instrument for the Lao to accompany the traditional song genre mo lam , which is performed at dance events and family celebrations. The mo lam music style has traditionally been used to recite Buddhist texts and has undergone a cultural transformation into a form of performance that disseminates social comments about the village community. A new style of music that developed from mo lam in connection with western electrified pop musical instruments, drums, singing and the receding use of khaen is lam sing. In pong lang , the xylophone play pong lang , the three-string long-necked lute phin , the panpipe wod , the khaen and drums together. In the popular luk thung singing style, a khaen represents a reference to tradition.

The khaen - a female instrument traditionally only played by men - can also be used as a soloist. Since there is no absolute tuning with the khaen and each instrument is tuned according to the client's wishes, there cannot be any khaen ensembles.

The instrument is held vertically with the hands on the wind chamber. The fingers including the thumbs of both hands are used to operate the pipe holes.

The range of the khaen pet is two and a half octaves with a diatonic tone supply from A to e ", which, influenced by Chinese music , is used in a five-tone series . Usually one or two pipe holes (the higher pipe) are plugged with wax to create a polyphony to achieve with a constant drone .

The khaen became known outside of Laos primarily through the compositions of the khaen player Randy Raine-Reusch , who also took part in recordings by Aerosmith , Yes and other rock groups. The khaen has been introduced since the 1990s as a hitherto little-known exotic instrument in the field of jazz and modern music.

Returning missionaries brought the khaen to Europe in the 19th century . In Sardinia , shepherds matched their mood to the Sardinian single- reed instrument launedda . Since then the mouth organ has been part of traditional folk music there.

In 2017, at the request of Laos, UNESCO put Khaen music on the list of the world's intangible cultural heritage .

Organs of the minority peoples

Qeej players in a Miao village in Guizhou Provincein southwest China

In the region, simpler preforms or variants of the khaen are common among some ethnic groups . With the Akha , Miao (among them the Hmong ), Lahu and Lisu , mouth organs have become highly regarded musical instruments due to an origin myth. Creator deities have replaced a lost script in the myths with the oral organ, which now offers a memory aid when singing traditional poetry. In the Lahu groups, music groups perform at the annual festivals such as New Year and Thanksgiving, in which men play the oral organ naw to the circular dances of the women , accompanied by a cymbal ( shaw ), a gong ( bhuck ) and the drum chack. The little naw eh is 35 cm long and suitable for love songs. It has five pipes, less often three or seven. The great naw don is used to worship ancestral spirits . The wind capsule consists of a calabash, the bamboo pipes contain metal tongues.

There are three types of mouth organs in the Lisu: The pali folu is the most important and smallest mouth organ, the lowest pipe of which sounds as a drone. If the ends of the pipe are partially closed with the thumbs, tonal decorations are possible. The folu o oo has four bamboo pipes, two of which protrude from under the wind chamber, one end is sealed with wax, the other is operated with the thumb. With the folu lalaa , the lowest whistle also emits a continuous tone.

The Kmhmu whose settlement center is in the mountains of northern Laos and adjacent areas in Vietnam and southern China to play next to the mouth organ sngkuul various flutes and a mouth harp , all of which are made of bamboo.

The mouth organ qeej ( Hmong language , pronounced "kreng") is called lusheng in standard Chinese . It is played by the Miao and is the focus of an elaborate funeral ceremony among the Hmong. The qeej has six bamboo pipes and a hardwood wind chamber, the two halves of which are held together by metal straps. The smallest and largest pipes each deliver a drone. In addition to funeral ceremonies, the qeej is also used for entertaining, secular songs and dances. The qeej is of particular importance because it can be used to convey linguistic messages to the soul of the deceased during the ceremony.

Discography

  • Boua Xou Mua: The Music of the Hmong People of Laos. Arhoole CD 446, Documentary Arts, Dallas (Texas) 1995. (Solo playing of a khaen with six pipes)
  • Lam Saravane: Musique pour le khène. Ocora C 559 058. Collection Ocora Radio France, 1989 (various artists)

literature

  • Terry E. Miller: Traditional Music of the Lao: Kaen Playing and Mawlum Singing in Northeast Thailand. Contributions in Intercultural and Comparative Studies, No. 13. Greenwood Press, Westport (Connecticut) 1985
  • Terry E. Miller: Laos. In: Terry E. Miller and Sean Williams: The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Vol. 4, Garland, New York 1998, pp. 335-361
  • Laurence ER Picken : Making of the Khaen: The Free-Reed Mouth Organ of North-East Thailand. Musica Asiatica Vol. 4, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984, pp. 117-154, ISBN 978-0-521-27837-9
  • Gretel Schwörer: The mouth organ at the Lahu in Northern Thailand. Construction, function and music . (Contributions to ethnomusicology 10) Verlag der Musikalienhandlung KD Wagner, Hamburg 1982, ISBN 978-3-921029-87-9 ( ethnomusic study with music samples, based on a dissertation at the University of Cologne 1980)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sompoton. Fascinating Malaysia ( Memento of the original dated May 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fascinatingmalaysia.com
  2. ↑ Mbuat. world instrument gallery ( Memento of the original from May 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.asza.com
  3. ^ Paul Collaer: Southeast Asia . (Werner Bachmann (Hrsg.): Music history in pictures . Volume I: Musikethnologie . Delivery 3) Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1979, p. 26
  4. ↑ Laurence Picken, p. 118
  5. ↑ Gretel Schwörer-Kohl: mouth organ. 4. Thailand and Laos. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Sachteil 6, 1997, col. 621
  6. ↑ Randy Raine-Reusch homepage
  7. ↑ Christopher Adler: Khaen (Lao / Northeast Thai mouth organ). American composer
  8. ^ Gisa Jähnichen: Sardinian Air in Lao Pipes. (PDF; 930 kB) Studia Instrumentorum Musicae Popularis XVI. ITCM Study Group on Folk Music Instruments. Proceedings from the 16th International Meeting, 2006
  9. ^ UNESCO: Khaen music of the Lao people. Accessed August 5, 2020 (English).
  10. ↑ Terry E. Miller, 1998, pp. 304 f
  11. ↑ Gretel Schwörer-Kohl: mouth organ. 4. Thailand and Laos. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present. Sachteil 6, 1997, Col. 622-624
  12. ^ Bamboo on the Mountains. Kmhmu Highlanders from Southeast Asia and the US Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1999  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. CD supplement@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / java.classical.com