Ozi (Myanmar)

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Ozi with the Shan .

Ozi , also òzi, ò-zi ( Burmese ), is a large tumbler drum that is played in the folk and ritual music of Myanmar by the Bamar and Shan in the rural areas of the central lowlands and by some minority peoples in the mountain regions. The drums made from one piece of wood differ considerably in size, which is between one and three meters in length, and shape. The ozi is used at annual festivals and in religious procession music and represents a cultural identification feature for the ethnic groups in their individual form.

Origin and Distribution

The loud Burmese music played outdoors uses almost exclusively percussion instruments for the rhythmic and melodic structure . In the classic hsaing waing ensemble, in addition to the eponymous melody instrument (or pat waing ), which consists of a circle of 21 tuned drums, two large barrel-shaped tubular drums called pat ma and sa khun , a row of six standing on the floor Double- headed drums ( chauk lon bat ) as well as various hump gongs and gong games. The only melody instrument in hsaing waing that produces an uninterrupted sound is the hne double reed instrument .

In addition to the best-known and most widespread classical Burmese orchestral type, there are other outdoor ensembles in which drums always play the leading role. These include not only the drums ozi the doubt that time, about 75 centimeters long barrel drum dhopat ( doupa ) used to sing along or in rural orchestras at festivals with teeth , big clash cymbals and bamboo rattle is played. The slightly larger bounci is used in a similar line-up or in the hsaing waing orchestra. The byo alone is not hit with the hands, but with sticks. The sito is a two-headed barrel drum up to 1.25 meters long, which was the only one of the drums mentioned that originally belonged to court music. It has the largest diameter at 50 centimeters.

Cup drums are widely used in Arabic music ( darbuka ), Persian music ( tombak ), and in West Africa ( djembé ). In Thailand, this type corresponds to thon or thap , which is around 30 centimeters long , the body of which is usually made of clay, less often of wood. A long wooden tumbler drum in Thailand comparable to the ozi is called klong yao . Some ethnic groups in the countries bordering Myanmar in the north are also familiar with cup drums, such as the Lahu and Karen , who took over their instruments from Thailand. In Cambodia, the cup drum occurs skor dey and in the Philippines the dabakan . None of these drums match the size of the ozi made by the Shan .

The home of the Burmese cup drums could be the kingdom of Nanzhao in what is now the southern Chinese province of Yunnan , from where Shan and Thai populations migrated south to Myanmar and Thailand around 800 AD . The Dai in southern China use a long tumbler drum in dance music at festivals.

Design

The ozi is turned from a softwood trunk and hollowed out inside. The barrel-shaped body merges into a slim stem ( kje'jin ) , often decorated with a series of bulges and knots, which widens at the bottom like a funnel to form a base ( padain ). The size is between one meter and 25 centimeters in diameter for the Bamar and over three meters in length with 60 centimeters in diameter for the Shan . An intermediate size of 1.20 meters in length and a diameter of 45 centimeters characterizes the ozi of the Danu, a subgroup of the Bamar, and the ozi of the Palaung , who live as a small minority in the eastern Shan state . The Intha drum on Inle Lake is 1.5 meters long and one meter in diameter.

The membrane, which is drawn over a ring and usually consists of deer skin, is braced by a tight V-shaped lacing with a ring on the underside of the body. As with the drum circle pat waing, the Bamar use a paste ( pat sa , literally “drum food”), which they apply in the middle of the membrane. The voice paste traditionally consists of a mixture of rice and the ashes of tamarind , today a plastic compound is mostly used. The Shan coat the eardrum with cooked sticky rice and the Danu with beeswax to influence the vibration behavior. When musicians state that they use alcohol or thanaka (make-up paste), this has hardly anything to do with influencing the sound. The wood is painted and varnished, for the Shan it is often black with red, gold and green patterns. A drum maker is able to produce several ozi types and to shape them according to the needs of the individual ethnic groups.

The player hangs the three-meter-long drum over his shoulder with a lanyard so that he can hit the membrane diagonally in front of his upper body with one or both hands, while the lower widening touches the floor with the edge behind him. The shorter drums hang freely on a ribbon over the shoulder.

Style of play

Ensembles with drum, gong and pair of basins appear at festivals such as the annual rice planting, religious processions where gifts are brought to the Buddhist monastery, and political rallies. You can be accompanied by dancers. Their own game traditions distinguish the Bamar from the Shan, Danu, Intha, Taungy, Pa-O and other ethnic groups. Even if the playing style does not differ significantly, the differences represent group-specific identifying features in the common habitat Myelat (middle mountainous region of the southern Shan state). The ozi is at the center of these ensembles. Only it has a shape characteristic of the ethnic groups, while the other instruments, which can also include wooden rattles and the palwei bamboo flute , are interchangeable.

Only the Bamar use the shrill-sounding double reed instrument hne to lead the melody, accompanied next to the ozi by a meter-long bamboo rattle ( walet-hkok, waletkout ) and pair cymbals ( yagwin, lingwin ). The three-meter-long drum of the Shan plays together with paired cymbals, which produce a push-pull to the drum beats, supplemented by four to eight humpback gongs, which ensure a constant basic beat. The gongs can be held in the hand separately by individual players or hung in a rack and played by one player at the same time using a mechanical lever transmission. The Danu ensemble consists of an ozi , a large gong, a pair of cymbals and two to three bamboo rattles. The playing possibilities of the enormously large Intha drum are limited. With a diameter of one meter it hangs uncomfortably in front of the upper body and can only be hit with the right hand.

At festivals, a dance group often performs the war dance led thaing with the ozi ensemble . Its style cannot be assigned to a specific ethnic group, but rather belongs to the silat tradition that is widespread in Thailand and the Malay islands . At larger festivals, the music groups of the various ethnic groups compete for the attention of the audience by making music close to one another at the same time. The dophat ensemble, in which the barrel drum hanging horizontally around the neck , is played dophat with bamboo rattles and a pair of cymbals, is just as popular at public events, namely theater performances . Both ensembles embody the typical rural folk music style. Every year the Soyaketi Festival takes place at the government seat in Naypyidaw , a state-organized competition for the performing arts in which the ensembles with ozi and dhopat always ensure that the audience is full. You accompany a singer who is dancing and making improvised jokes.

The Shan use images of the ozi in every form - from posters on public buildings to pocket calendars - for decoration, tourism advertising and to assert a cultural and political nationalism in confrontation with the government. The ozi also appears among the Danu as a political national symbol in the emblem of the Democratic Danu Party ( Danu amyo tha a pwe ) founded in 2010 .

literature

  • Gavin Douglas: Performing Ethnicity in Southern Shan State, Burma / Myanmar: The Ozi and Gong Traditions of the Myelat . In: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 57, No. 2. University of Illinois Press, Spring-Summer 2013, pp. 185-206
  • Ò-zi. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 2. Macmillan Press, London 1984, p. 978

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ward Keeler: Burma. In: Terry Miller, Sean Williams (Eds.): The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music . Volume 4: Southeast Asia . Garland, New York 1998, p. 375
  2. ^ Gavin Douglas, p. 193
  3. ^ Gavin Douglas, pp. 187, 194
  4. ↑ Gavin Douglas: The Sokayeti Performing Arts Competition of Burma / Myanmar: Performing the Nation. In: The World of Music, Vol. 45, No. 1, (Contesting Tradition: Cross-Cultural Studies of Musical Competition) 2003, pp. 35–54, here p. 40
  5. ^ Gavin Douglas: Who's Performing What? State Patronage and the Transformation of Burmese Music. In: Monique Skidmore (Ed.): Burma At The Turn Of The Twenty-first Century. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 2005, p. 237, ISBN 978-0824828974
  6. ^ Gavin Douglas, pp. 203f