Ribab

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Ribab , DMG ribāb , also rribab, rbab soussi , is a single-stringed, bow- struck box lute that is traditionally played in Morocco by professional poetic singers ( raʾīs ) of the Taschelhit- speaking Berbers in the south-west of the country. The raʾīs ( rais, Pl. Rwais ) appears as a comedian and solo entertainer or as the leader of a group of up to a dozen actors who make music, sing and dance at the same time. The instrument, whose name is related to the rabāb group, which is widespread in the Orient, can be hung with jewelry and thus become an investment for its owner.

Ribab

Origin and Distribution

With the spit lute, the long neck made of a wooden stick crosses the body and protrudes a little on the underside. Three groups are distinguished according to their body shape. A typical representative of the bowl spike violins, which have a bowl-shaped, round body, is the Egyptian kamanǧa (also rebāb ) with two strings and a long iron spike protruding from the underside. It is related in name and form to the Persian kamantsche . In the north of Africa the spit sounds can be assigned regionally: In West Africa inland spits with a bowl-shaped body, which can be boat-shaped or circular, are represented. The neck ends within the resonance body covered with a skin cover. In the Sahara and Sahel zone , where the skewered bowls came from the 11th century with the Islamization by the Arabs, the boat-shaped plucked sounds include the three-stringed tahardent of the Tuareg , the four -stringed tidinit in Mauritania and the ngoni in Mali . The single-stringed imzad of the Tuareg and the likewise single-stringed goge of the Hausa are crossed spit lutes with a circular, bowl-shaped body .

East Africa is the main focus of the tube skewers, the most famous representative of which is the endingidi and which came inland from the East African coast at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century with the spread of the Arab Swahili culture. The kaligo occurs further south in Malawi .

The ribāb belongs to the third group of box skewers, the body of which consists of a frame that is joined to form a rectangle with boards, or is circularly curved with wood chips or has a different shape. The frame is covered with animal skin on one or both sides. This includes the three-string plucked gunbrī , which is best known in Morocco . Closely related to the ribāb is the Ethiopian single-string fiddle masinko .

The Baghdad scholar al-Farabi first mentioned in the first half of the 10th century in his Kitāb al-mūsīqā al-kabīr ("The Great Book of Music") that an instrument called rabāb was bowed. The Arabic root word rbb is included in the name of a large group of different string instruments from the Maghreb to Southeast Asia. Rabāb is the classical Arabic word for spit violins. These include two differently shaped long pike violins in Egypt (in the dialect rebāb ), as well as short kink-necked lutes with slender boxes in Morocco and Tunisia (also rebāb ). The two-string Moroccan short-necked lute rebāb (also rabāb, rbāb ) with its slim body made from a solid piece of wood differs significantly from the ribāb . The group of names also includes the compact Afghan rubāb , some Central Asian lutes, the three-stringed spike violin rebab in Malaysia and the rebab in the Muslim music of Lombok on the eastern edge of the distribution area.

The oldest tradition could be the one-stringed box-shaped "poet's fiddle" of the Arab Bedouin rabāba . As the epithet implies, this instrument belongs to a regional storytelling tradition, it used to be played mainly by the Sulubba (Sulaib, Sleb), a despised tribe of blacksmiths, tinkers and donkey breeders.

The singing-accompanying function is also expressed in the name of the rebāb aš-šāʿir ("Rabāb of the poet"), which is sometimes called kamanǧet aš-šāʿir or rebāb al-muġannī ("Rabāb of the singer"). This functional term is used to describe several instruments of Egyptian folk music, which are rare today: One consists of a body made of four wooden boards in the shape of an isosceles trapezoid standing on top. One or two horse hair strings are stretched over a long wooden stick and attached at the bottom to an iron spike that is also long. The second two-string type has a coconut resonator. If a segment of the coconut shell is cut off on both sides, the spit fiddle is called rebāb turqī.

Design

The body of the ribāb consists of a circular, approximately round or sometimes heart-shaped curved frame made of olive or grapevine wood, which is covered on both sides with goat skin. The slim neck is made from a walnut stick and has a square diameter that tapers to a round pommel above the vertebra. Its lower third is turned into a round bar. The round rod is pushed into the body from where the two ends of the slats overlap and protrudes a few centimeters above the frame at the lower end. While in the Ethiopian masinko a long wooden peg, inserted from below through a hole in the neck, holds the string parallel to the truss rod at a large distance, the peg of the ribāb sits across the neck, so that the horse hair string is on the left side as seen by the player runs obliquely outwards. The bridge sits in the upper area on the membrane. Below the bridge, the string ends on an iron ring that is wrapped around the skewer with a hemp or nylon cord. A few centimeters below the peg, a cord is attached with a slight pull between the string and the neck, which, like a musical bow, determines the effective length of the string and thus the height of the keynote. The total length of a typical instrument is about 80 centimeters.

A flat curved wooden stick serves as a bow, with the horse hair tied between the ends. Old arches have carvings or inlays, the ends are wrapped in strips of fabric. Colored electrical tape is used in today's arches. As with some frame drums , gut strings stretched across the membrane produce snarling noises, if they are studded with pearls, additional rattling noises as soon as the membrane is vibrated.

Beyond their musical use, ribāb decorated with pearls and attached silver jewelry represent a material value. The value of silver can be several times that of the instrument and represent a reserve for the owner for times of need.

Style of play

A still esteemed poet-singer of Schlöh was Lhadj Belaïd (1873 - around 1945), the 1937 first Schlöh in Paris a record with songs and ribāb recorded.

The ribāb player shortens the string with the left hand roughly in the middle of the fingers without pressing the string down on the neck, while holding the left thumb against the neck from below. The fingering technique is similar to that of the rabāb aš-šāʿir played in Egypt and on the Arabian Peninsula .

The Taschelhit-speaking Berbers, known as Schlöh (Šlūḥ) or Ishlhin, have music played by amateurs in the villages for entertainment in addition to the music of professional singers and dance groups. The focus is on the dance music ahwasch ("dance"). The music of the Gnawa is a separate musical genre , a religious group with black African roots who play the barrel drum ṭbal in addition to the long-necked lute gunbrī and sintir . Outside of the regional musical culture, there is the recitation of the Koran and other religious texts by the Islamic scholar ( ṭaleb , Pl. Erworbenolba ), who ideally has acquired education and reputation from several zawāyā (Sg. Zāwiya ). If the influence of the Orthodox Islamic ṭolba has become too great in a village , the residents may forego setting up their own ahwasch dance troupe and, in order to be able to celebrate their annual festivals, order a professional troupe from elsewhere.

The professional singer ( raʾīs ) accompanies his long, epic ballads or life wisdom presented in short form on the ribāb or the three-stringed plucked box- neck lute gunbrī . Traditional wandering singers draw from a large pool of Islamic myths, historical narratives and stories from everyday life, which they develop into a one-person drama using gestures and dance movements. These long stories are called lkyst. The tandamt are their own poetic genre . The poet-singer reads short adventure stories, everyday observations and sayings. The third of the four categories described by Hans Stumme in 1895, tamawušt , contains poems of mockery between man and woman in dialogue form, in which quick-wittedness is important. They are performed at night outside by a fire. Finally, Lġnu are songs used by women doing housework.

Originally in the south of the Anti-Atlas in the Souss region, there is a special dance art that is performed today by professional dancer-musicians on the Djemaa el Fna in Marrakech and at events in other cities. It consists of an instrumental prelude, followed by singing and dancing. The free rhythmic attunement ( astara ) with the ribāb is followed by the poetic singing performance ( amarg ), which forms the main part. A choreographed dance ( ammussu ) leads to another dance song ( tamssust ), which increases with increasing tempo to the suddenly ending finale ( tabbayt ).

At the beginning of the performance, the actors line up in a row. Then the frame drum playing Bendix and the wooden flute longitudinal 'awāda (also ajewwaq, Pl. Tajewwaqt ) before the Ra'is , standing in front of the rank on his ribāb the instrumental opening ( astara plays) and dictates the melodic line. The raʾīs acts as the musical director ( amghar , male Pl. Imgharen , old man, village head) who is the only one allowed to play the ribāb . Then the ensemble musicians join in on the gunbrī , the Schlöh's most famous instrument. Two of them create a rhythm by beating three cymbals ( nūīqsāt ) attached to the fingers with leather cords in each hand like qarāqib elsewhere in Morocco . As soon as the choir forms in a row, some of the instrumentalists step back. The raʾīs stands in front of the singers and begins a solo song, accompanied by his fiddle. The singers repeat the melody phrases several times and everyone plays the gunbrī . When the choir begins to dance, a musician sitting on the floor strikes the nāqūs with two metal sticks , any iron part that is as round as possible (cooking pot, brake drum) that he has placed on a piece of rubber or on a leather shoe. About three to six gunbrī players are constantly on the move. The melody does not vary much and almost completely dispenses with the quarter-tone intervals that are common in Arabic music . The main interval is the enlarged fourth . The dancers sing alternately with the raʾīs and form more and more complicated, carefully planned formations. They stand opposite each other in a double row, form serpentine lines or move counterclockwise in a circle. Hitting the floor ( stove ) with bare heels is of particular importance. The strongest rhythmic accent is created by stamping with the flat foot. The dancers wear long white robes ( ganduras ) that are held together at the waist with an embroidered belt

The number of participants in the professional rwaʾīs and the amateur ahwash performances is similar. The difference between the two groups is that the ahwasch belong to the local tradition of the respective village and have an identity- forming meaning, while the troops of the rwaʾīs perform throughout the country and occasionally abroad, react flexibly to musical influences and adapt their stories to the audience. The ahwasch the conservative element and embodying in this comparative rwa'īs the digested, internationalising side of Schlöh culture.

literature

  • Paul Collaer, Jürgen Elsner: North Africa . Series: Werner Bachmann (Hrsg.): Music history in pictures . Volume I: Ethnic Music . Delivery to the 8th German Publishing House for Music, Leipzig 1983
  • Ulrich Wegner: African string instruments. (New part 41. Department of Music Ethnology V.) Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin 1984, p. 133f

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Roger Blench: The Morphology and Distribution of Sub-Saharan Musical Instruments of North-African, Middle Eastern, and Asian, Origin. (PDF; 463 kB) In: Laurence Picken (Ed.): Musica Asiatica. Vol. 4 Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984, pp. 173f, ISBN 978-0521278379
  2. ^ Hans Hickmann: The music of the Arabic-Islamic area. In: Bertold Spuler (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Orientalistik . 1. Dept. The Near and Middle East . Supplementary Volume IV. Oriental Music . EJ Brill, Leiden / Cologne 1970, p. 68
  3. ^ Anthony Baines: The Oxford Companion to Musical Instruments. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992, p. 277
  4. ↑ Ulrich Wegner, p. 131
  5. ^ Paul Collaer, Jürgen Elsner, p. 38
  6. ↑ Ulrich Wegner, p. 133f
  7. ↑ Myriam Naït Yacoub: Raiss Lhaj Belaid: The Artist! In: La lettre # 16 de Migrations & Développement - 05/12. P. 10
  8. ^ Philip D. Schuyler: The Rwais and the Zawia: Professional Musicians and the Rural Religious Elite in Southwestern Morocco . In: Asian Music, Vol. 17, No. 1, Herbst – Winter 1985, pp. 114–131, here p. 117
  9. ↑ Tandamt. Youtube video (lecture tandamt with gunbrī accompaniment )
  10. ↑ Hans Stumme: Poetry and poems of the Schluh. JC Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1895, pp. 2–9 ( at Internet Archive )
  11. ^ Simon Broughton, Marc Ellingham, Richard Trillo: World Music . Volume 1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East . Rough Guides, London 2000, p. 569, ISBN 978-1858286358
  12. ↑ Theodore C. grief: Music in the Jma al-Fna of Marrakesh. In: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1, January 1970, pp. 74-87, here pp. 84f
  13. ↑ Viviane Lièvre: The Dances of the Maghreb. Morocco - Algeria - Tunisia. Translated by Renate Behrens. Otto Lembeck, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 90, ISBN 978-3-87476-563-3 (French original edition: Éditions Karthala, Paris 1987)
  14. ^ Paul Collaer, Jürgen Elsner, p. 162
  15. ^ Philip Vilas Bohlman : The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1988, p. 100