Pondur

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Detschig pondur

Pondur ( пондур ), also pondar (пондар) pondr (пондр) phandar (пхıандар), is the general term for musical instruments in the Russian republic of Chechnya and is in the strict sense of the three-stringed nave loud detschig pondur that the Chechen and Ingush folk music is played as a soloist and to accompany singing and is considered the national instrument of the Chechens . The same plucked instrument is called apa pschina by the Circassians . It belongs to a group of lute instruments with a narrow body that are common in the Caucasus under similar names , including the tamur in Dagestan and the panduri in Georgia . The Chechen name detschig pondur (дечиг по́ндур, dechik pondur , "wooden pondur") distinguishes the plucked lute from the spit fiddle adchonku pondur ("bowed pondur") and also from the harmonica kechat paper pondur (кехатр, because Pondur, because Pondur the bellows are made of a cardboard-like, thin material).

Origin and Distribution

The culture of the North Caucasus is characterized by a large number of mostly small peoples with their own national languages ​​and different musical forms (tone scales, melodies and rhythms). Nevertheless, the music and especially the musical instruments of the region have some similarities that suggest a common origin of the peoples in the North Caucasus.

In ancient times there were obviously certain relationships between the Caucasus region and Mesopotamia , which were reflected in linguistic correspondences. The type of two-stringed long-necked lute with the Assyrian name sinnitu is on Babylonian clay tablets of the 2nd millennium BC. And on clay figures of the Hittites around 1000 BC. Pictured BC. A clay tablet from the Babylonian Nippur , dating from around 1900 BC. BC, shows a shepherd playing his dog on the two-stringed long-necked lute. Francis Galpin (1937) traces the name variants of pandur , which extend from the ancient Greek lute pandura to pandora, back to the Sumerian pan-tur ("small bow"). At that time, lute instruments had the advantage over the previously known multi-string bows harps that they were smaller and easier to transport. Pandur is made up of the term pan for the old West Asian bow harp and tur , "small". Tur still has the same meaning in today's Georgian language as tar, thir or tul . The Georgian panduri is related in form and language to the Armenian pandura .

The instrument name pandur is also linked to the Arabic word tunbūr , which first appeared in the 7th century for a musical instrument. In Persian , long-necked sounds are called tanbūr , derived from tambura in the Balkans , dambura in northern Afghanistan , tanburo in southern Pakistan and tanpura in India .

Design

The detschig pondur has a long rectangular body that ends straight at the bottom and leads to the neck at obtuse angles at the top. In the top view, the body is bottle-shaped or shovel-shaped. The base of the body is deeply bulged in the middle and flat at the bottom. While the side view roughly corresponds to the Dagestani tamur , both instruments can be distinguished on the top of the body, which in the tamur merges into the neck in an elegant curve. In addition, the detschig pondur does not have the prongs that many tamur have as the end of the body. The body of the detschig pondur is traditionally carved out of a block of wood (walnut). There are also modern variants of the shape, the body of which is glued together from several parts. The ceiling is usually made of light wood (linden) and inlaid with dark walnut. A circular sound hole is located in the upper area of ​​the ceiling in the middle under the strings. In the past the strings were made of gut or horse hair. The three steel strings commonly used today, which can be double-choir on modern instruments, lead over a bridge loosely attached to the ceiling to a pegbox at the end of the straight neck, which is slightly bent backwards , where they are attached to lateral vertebrae. For this purpose, pegs with a tuning mechanism are used as in the guitar . The strings are tuned to g – e – d. The fingerboard has metal frets.

Seated musicians place the pondur almost horizontally on the right thigh; Musicians playing while standing hold the lute with the pointed end of the body in the crook of the right arm and with the left hand, which grips around the neck from below, horizontally in front of the upper body. The strings are torn simultaneously with the fingernails of the right hand in quick up and down movements (strumming).

Plucked long-necked lutes that are similarly used in the region are the trapezoidal panduri and the chonguri in Georgia as well as the Russian balalaika , which differs from the detschig pondur by its triangular body. The three-string spike violin adchonku pondur ( adxoky pondur ) with a circular body through which a thin wooden stick is inserted is related to the Georgian chuniri and, like the Persian kamantsche, is played by the seated musician with the spike on the left knee in a vertical position. He holds the neck of the spit violin in his left hand and wields the bow with his right.

Style of play and meaning

Five traditionally dressed and armed Chechens. Group picture at a wedding of George Kennan , around 1870–1886

In Chechen music, a distinction is made between vocal music and instrumental music, which accompanies dances and festive events in general, and instrumental music that is only performed for listening. The latter includes a large repertoire for the detschig pondur or - since its popularization in the 1880s - for the accordion ( kechat pondur ), with the pieces often improvising. Within this threefold division of the musical areas, vocal music is further subdivided into epic songs ( illi ) performed by men in recitation , which are mostly about heroic stories against a historical background, and into lyrical love songs by women ( escharsch ), table songs ( dottagallijn jisch ) and Songs for certain other occasions. The accompaniment with a detschig pondur is characteristic of the male vocal performance . According to the Dagestani tamur, it is the most important Chechen musical instrument. Alternatively, male choir singing occurs in which the melody line is accompanied by a deep drone made up of two alternating tones every second . The spike violin adchonku pondur and the harmonica kechat pondur also serve to accompany the song.

The professional bards ( ch'oendargoi or chunguroi ) who perform folk songs including the illi are part of a Central Asian cultural tradition like the Azerbaijani aşıq and the Turkish aşık . They used to be in every church and they were highly respected. The illi singing bards ( illancha ) went to war with the army in order to raise the morale of the troops through cheering songs and to immortalize the victorious battles in verse. For this task, the bards were spared direct combat operations even in dire straits. Legend has it that after his victory over the Chechens at the end of the 14th century , Timur asked if his people had also taken the national instrument pondar . When the answer was negative, Timur said, “then you haven't really conquered them” and ordered the Chechen bard to be brought in. Timur gave him his saber as a gesture of reconciliation, combined with the wish that the brave Chechens would become his allies.

In the blood revenge , which was widespread in the past , families had to withdraw to defensive towers for their safety . The entrance to a defensive tower was three meters above the ground and could only be reached via a movable ladder. The master's lounge on the top floor was decorated on the walls with national symbols from the visual arts, music and warfare, i.e. with a tapestry ( istang ), a pondar and a saber ( shaschka ).

The recitative singing of the Muslim Chechens and the Ingush related to them bears a certain resemblance to the polyphonic singing of the neighboring Christian Georgians , despite their own melodic phrases . Otherwise, traditional music in the North Caucasus region is becoming increasingly national in character as a result of violent political conflicts along ethnic dividing lines.

literature

  • Laurence Libin: Pondur. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Volume 4, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 147

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ketevan Khutsishvili: Georgia on the crossroad of the religious ideas. In: The Caucasus: Georgia on the Crossroads. Cultural exchanges across the Europe and Beyond . ( Memento from November 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ; PDF) 2nd International Symposium of Georgian Culture, Florence, 2. – 9. November 2009, p. 48
  2. ^ Francis W. Galpin: The Music of the Sumerians and their Immediate Successors, the Babylonians and Assyrians. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1937, p. 35
  3. ↑ See J.-C. Chabrier: Ṭunbūr. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Volume 10, Brill, Leiden 2000, p. 625
  4. ↑ Atlas of Plucked Instruments. Middle East: Chechnya: pondar
  5. ↑ Chechen Music. The Latta Foundation for Development of Science and Culture
  6. ↑ groznygossip.files.wordpress.com (photo, playing posture of standing musicians)
  7. ↑ Amjad Jaimoukha: The Chechens: A Handbook . (Caucasus World Peoples of the Caucasus) Routledge Curzon, London / New York 2005, p. 186
  8. ^ Joseph Jordania: North Caucasia . In: Thimothy Rice, James Porter, Chris Goertzen (Eds.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music . Volume 8: Europe. Routledge, New York / London 2000, p. 863
  9. ↑ Dechig-pondar - Chechen national instrument . Vestnik Kavkaza
  10. ↑ Manašir Jakubov: Caucasus. 5. Dagestan. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Part 5, 1996, Col. 24
  11. ↑ Amjad Jaimoukha, 2005, p. 185
  12. ↑ Amjad Jaimoukha, 2005, p. 172
  13. ↑ Wolfgang Schulze: Art tradition, minnesang and heroic epic. In: Marie-Carin von Gumppenberg, Udo Steinbach (ed.): The Caucasus: History - Culture - Politics. CH Beck, Munich 2008, p. 226
  14. ↑ Ketevan Khutsishvili: Georgia on the crossroad of the religious ideas . 2009, p. 46; see. Victor A. Friedman: A Balkanist in Daghestan: Annotated Notes from the Field. In: The Anthropology of East Europe Review , Volume 16, No. 2, 1998, pp. 178-203