Qanbus

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Qanbus ( Arabic القنبوس, DMG al-qanbūs ), also qabus, ʿud ṣanʿānī, ṭarab, turbī , is a seldom played pear-shaped lute in Yemeni music. It was the most common melody instrument with which Sufi musicians in Sanaa accompanied their poetic songs. In the 15th century at the latest, the qanbus reached Southeast Asia with Arab traders, where it is known as gambus melayu . In his home country, the four-stringed instrument with its gentle tones was almost superseded by the Arabic kink-necked laūd .

Origin and Distribution

The gabbus ( gambusi ) from Zanzibar and the Comoros sounds gabusi are related in name and form in the Arab and North African regions . The kabosy of Madagascar is a simple box-neck lute with three to five strings. In Saudi Arabia a lute is called gabus and in Oman gabbus ( qabbūṣ ). They are similar to the kibangala played on the Swahili coast and are exemplary among the many similar inland spits from West Africa, the ngoni from Mali and the tidinit from Mauritania . According to Curt Sachs , these narrow plucked instruments are said to go back to preforms of the fretless Turkish sounds kopuz ( kobuz ) in Kyrgyzstan and qūbūz ( qāwūz ) in Uzbekistan and came to the country with the Turks in the Middle Ages.

The consonant root qn appears frequently in connection with music in Semitic languages . By the 15th century at the latest, the word qanbus and the type of instrument reached Southeast Asia with Arab traders, many of whom came from the Southeast Yemeni region of Hadramaut , where two different lute types meet with Islam across the Malay Peninsula and on to Sumatra , Borneo and Sulawesi expanded. Both sounds are called gambus in the Malay language . The pear-shaped type, derived from the Yemeni Qanbus, is called gambus melayu , to distinguish it from the round-bellied lute gambus Hadramaut , whose shape is derived from a type of the old Persian stringed instrument barbaṭ , which was the model for the Arabic ʿūd . Yemeni emigrants also spread the instrument along the East African coast . A name reference to the medieval European viols sounds plausible, but is not certain.

Design

Qanbus in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna

The body is of one piece apricot wood or Abrus bottae (Arabic ṭunub , genus Abrus ) hollowed out and, as with all instruments of this type which, instead of ceiling with a goat skin ( parchment -covered). The Afghan rubāb is made similarly ; In contrast to this, the qanbus is not waisted, but gradually merges from the body into a slender neck that ends in a C-shaped pegbox that is bent downwards. The skin covering ensures a soft sound rich in overtones . The skin is colored green or blue. The total length of the qanbus is between 78 and 85 centimeters, the width of the sound box 18 to 21 centimeters, the floor is very flat at 11 to 14 centimeters. The fretless neck of valuable instruments is decorated with inlays .

The instrument has four strings, three of which are double strings, the lowest string on the far left is single. They are four and three stilted wooden vertebrae moored which face each other horizontally. The strings are struck with a plectrum made from an eagle feather. The names of the strings and their tuning, starting with the lowest individual string: C 1, Arabic al-hāziq ("the tightness"). The following double strings are called: D 1, al-wāsit ("the middle one"); G 2, ar-raḥīm ("the gracious") and C 2, al-ǧarr ("the pulling one"). The range is 1.5 octaves.

The introduction of the Arabic ʿūd in the first half of the 20th century brought some technical improvements for the qanbus and for the ʿūd the playing style was adapted to local styles.

Musical tradition

The qanbus is closely linked to the poetry Homaynī , sung in colloquial Yemeni Arabic , which originated in the 14th and 15th centuries during the cultural heyday of the Rasulid dynasty in Taizz and Zabid and was performed publicly. Before the puritanical concept of culture in the following centuries, music set itself apart as an increasingly intimate art form that was only performed in a small, aristocratic circle. In Sanaa, the qanbus was given the nickname ʿud ṣanʿānī in the genre of songs al-ghināʾ al-Ṣanʿānī , which was created around 1900 and in which Sufi musicians usually accompanied each other on the lute or on the copper plate sahn nuhasi .

The traditional musician is called Mughannī , literally “singer”. Several regional musical styles have developed within the Homaynī tradition, so the qanbus was a popular accompanying instrument in the coastal town of Aden until the beginning of the 20th century . In addition, the five-string lyre simsimīyah served as a melody accompaniment in Aden . Just like the qanbus through the ʿūd , the spiked violin rabābah there was later replaced by the modern violin ( kamān ). The two old string instruments were also known in the Hadramaut. From 1948, the year the reactionary Imam Ahmad ibn Yahya came to power , until 1955 there was a ban on making music in Sanaa. Most of the musicians had fled to Ethiopia , Djibouti or South Yemen during this time , where they contributed to the development of their own styles. In 1956 the first radio station was opened in Sanaa.

In the ʿAdanī style of Aden, which had formed in the 1940s as a Yemeni- Somali mixture with a strong influence from more recent Egyptian music , the modern ʿūd was soon introduced as well as the Laḥǧī style in the South Yemeni province of Lahag north of Aden. Larger pitch and volume were seen as advantages of ʿūd over qanbus and rabābah . The tradition of mughannī , the poetic singer who can be accompanied by qanbus or sahn nuhasi , is only maintained by a few older men.

Most of the melodies of the Ṣanʿānī music genre are in the Arabic Maqam Rast or in the Turkish Maqam Uşşak (ʿushshāq). Although there is no specific rhythm theory, many rhythm circles have their own names. For the al-ghināʾ al-Ṣanʿānī , eleven and seven bars are typical, both are called dasʿa (“step”). The musicians strive for a rapprochement between the musical instrument and the human voice, whereby the musical language should directly express the poetry.

Discography

  • Hasan al-Ajami, chant and qanbus ; Mohammed al-Khamisi, sahn nuhasi : The Singing of Sana'a. Yemen. Ocora Radio France, 9488171422, March 2008
  • Hasan al-Ajami, chant and qanbus ; Ahmed Ushaysh, sahn nuhasi : Le chant de Sanaa. Institute du Monde Arabe, 321029, March 1998

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Ulrich Wegner: African string instruments. ( Publications of the Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin , New Volume 41, Department of Music Ethnology , V) Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 1984, p. 147f, ISBN 3-88609-117-1
  2. ↑ kibangala / gabusi. Atlas of Plucked Instruments
  3. ^ Curt Sachs: The History of Musical Instruments . WW Norton & Company, New York 1940; according to Hilarian, Proceedings 2006, p. 51
  4. ↑ Henry George Farmer : Meccan Musical Instruments. In: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland , No. 3, July 1929, pp. 489-505, here p. 491
  5. ↑ Christian Poché gives slightly larger numbers: length 90–100 cm, width about 25 cm, depth 12–15 cm
  6. ↑ qanbūs, Kibangala, & Gabusi. A portfolio.
  7. ↑ Braune, Col. 1442
  8. ^ Flagg Miller: Yemen. In: John Shepherd, David Horn, Dave Laing (Eds.): Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. Vol. VI. Africa and the Middle East. Continuum, London 2005, p. 245
  9. ^ Philip D. Schuyler: Music and Tradition in Yemen. In: Asian Music , Vol. 22, No. 1, University of Texas Press, Fall 1990 - Winter 1991, pp. 51-71, here p. 59
  10. ↑ Lambert, Garland 2002, pp. 687-690