Simsimiyya

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Simsimiyya with 14 strings. A musician from the El Tanbura Orchestra from Port Said , 2012.

Simsimiyya , also semsemiya ( Arabic سمسمية, DMG simsimīya ), is a lyre that is played in popular Arabic music from the Sinai Peninsula in the north along the coast of the Red Sea to Yemen and still (rarely) on Zanzibar . The plucked instrument with five or more strings accompanies the traditional songs of storytellers of the Bedouin , and it is used together with other melody instruments in the lively dance music of the port cities, especially in Port Said .

Origin and Distribution

Lyres have their origin with the Sumerians in Mesopotamia , from where they have spread westward to the Mediterranean. The most famous lyre in Palestine is the kinnor mentioned in the Old Testament . From the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC In BC, box veins were depicted on murals in ancient Egyptian rock tombs. Latest in the first centuries. Chr. Reached Lyre of Egypt on the Nile upstream to Nubia , where until now the five- or six-string lyre Tanbura (Nubian Kisir belongs) to the most popular musical instruments. The lyre had come to the Aksumite Empire by the 4th century . The tradition of the box lyre used for entertainment in Ethiopia and the beganna , which is reserved for religious occasions , is traced back to this time. The southernmost area of ​​distribution of the African lyres is West Kenya and Uganda . A six centimeter high seated bronze figure with a lyre from the 1st / 2nd centuries. Century AD in Yemen is one of the few finds from the Sabaean period that show that the lyre was known in pre-Islamic Arabia on the Red Sea.

Lyres played only a minor role in classical Arabic music since the Islamic period . The lyre miʿzaf is documented in Egypt until the 10th century . Lyres still existed in Egypt in the 11th century, at the time of the Fatimid dynasty, later their original Arabic name al-kinnāra (derived from kinnor ) can no longer be distinguished from the lute instruments and drums of the same name . Arabic lyres have been preserved regionally in folk music, the tambūra is used in ceremonies by descendants of former black slaves as far as the Persian Gulf and southern Iraq . Compared to the tambūra , the simsimiyya is a little more elegant and elaborate. Possibly the name is derived from simsim (Arabic " sesame "), which means "fine, well-formed" in the Egyptian vernacular.

Design

Simsimiyya with six strings. A musician from al-Bawiti in the Bahariyya Oasis , 2006.

The term simsimiyya applies to lyres without a precisely defined construction that are played in the region mentioned and in the corresponding musical styles. According to the shape of the resonance body , they can be assigned to bowl or box veins. The bowl veils consist of a flat, rounded wooden body, the ceiling of which , unlike all other Arab and African lyres, does not consist of an animal skin, but of a wooden board. In the case of trapezoidal box veils, the floor, side panels and the ceiling are glued together from boards. Simsimiyya with a body made from a sheet metal canister, as is common in Saudi Arabia, are covered with skin. While the tambūra has a triangular, expansive frame made of round wooden sticks and is played while sitting, the frame of the simsimiyya is somewhat smaller and trapezoidal. The simsimiyya can therefore also be held in a vertical position with the left hand on the lower yoke arm and played while standing. The usually five, especially in southern Yemen six, wire strings are tuned by modern metal pegs on the crossbar. They run over a bridge-shaped web, which stands in the lower third on the ceiling, to the underside of the body.

The strings are either plucked individually with a plectrum in the right hand or, in a sitting position, they are all struck together using the method that has been used since ancient times (known as strumming on the guitar ). Strings that are not supposed to sound are covered with the fingers of the left hand from the other side. The sound does not resonate much and, depending on the construction, is metallic clear or somewhat dull. The tuning of the five strings in Suez is # f1 - e1 - # d1 - # c1 - b.

Some Egyptian lyres have been equipped with up to 16 strings in Port Said and Suez since around 1980 in order to be able to accompany the songs of popular Arab singers such as Umm Kulthum or Abdel Halim Hafez with a larger range . A 16-string simsimiyya could be tuned like this: three strings in the low register ( qarār ), six strings in the middle register ( ʿādī ), roughly corresponding to # g1 - # f1 - e1 - # d1 - # c1 - b. The remaining seven strings in the high register ( ǧawāb ), means "response", based on the qarār strings an octave higher. Sometimes electrical pickups are connected.

Style of play

Comparable to the Nubian kisir and the Ethiopian krar , the simsimiyya in Egypt is only played in danceable entertainment music and for song accompaniment by storytellers and does not have the ritual significance of the tambūra and other lyres. The stories of the Bedouins in the Sinai desert are presented by a singer, who is accompanied by a simsimiyya and a choir singing the refrain. Clapping hands and dark oil barrels provide the rhythm.

In Yemen, the poetic singer (mughannī) accompanied himself up to the first half of the 20th century on the metal plate sahn nuhasi , the tin can tanak , the pear-shaped plucked qanbus or - especially in the music scene Aden - on the simsimiyya . With the increasing spread of radio, the Arabic lute ʿūd gradually began to replace all other accompanying instruments.

The story of today's popular music in the Egyptian port cities of Port Said and Ismailia began before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Workers from Upper Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia and other areas on the Red Sea moved to Port Said, which was newly founded in 1859, to help build the canal. The different population groups developed their own style of music called ḍamma (“union, affiliation”), in which a singer recites any known song ( uġniyya ), to which other singers respond with partially improvised songs ( ǧawāb ) that match the melody or text have to. Ḍamma not only denotes the style, but also the musicians and performance practice. The simsimiyya was the typical accompaniment instrument for these chants.

Semi- professional street musicians developed the dance music style bambūṭiyya (bamboute) , named after the bumboat , a small supply ship, especially for the entertainment of dock workers and seamen . The bambūṭiyya may have been influenced by the Charleston , which became fashionable in Egypt in the 1920s. The dancer performs similar, far-reaching leg movements, swings his hips and mimics various physical activities of a dock worker with his arms. Bambūṭiyya , a content category of the ḍamma songs, was also the name of the traveling traders who ensured the food supply on small boats along the canal. The music groups performing in the coffeehouses at the harbor called themselves suhbaǧiyya (from ṣahiba , "to accompany someone"). The style of music reached the height of its popularity in the second half of the 19th century.

Today the musicians and singers of this song tradition in the Egyptian canal cities call themselves firaq (Sg. Firqa ). Her accompanying instruments for the dance songs are the simsimiyya, the lute ʿūd , the single-stringed fiddle rababa , occasionally the longitudinal flute nay , several drums (generally ṭabl ), including tambourines ( duff ) or beaker drums ( darbuka ) . Metal pots and petrol cans are also suitable as percussion instruments.

On the island of Zanzibar off the Tanzanian coast, in addition to the courtly taarab music style, the traditional sambra and sharaha styles , which are also of Arabic origin, are cultivated. The small double-headed cylinder drum mirwas (Arabic, plural marāwīs ) provides the rhythm for both . In sambra music the leading melody instrument is the simsimiyya ( Kiswahili utari ), in sharaha music it is the cone oboe nzumari . At least in the 1990s, sambra music was still played sporadically.

Discography

  • Bedouin Jerry Can Band: Coffee Time . 30 IPS, 2007
  • Ensemble Al-Tanburah (directed by Zakariya Ibrahim): Simsimiyya de Port-Said. Institut du Monde Arab, Paris 1999
  • El Tanbura: Friends of Bamboute: 20th Anniversary Edition. 30 IPS, 2009

literature

  • Gabriele Braune: The Ḍamma and Simsimiyya repertoire in Port Saʿīd. In: Rüdiger Schumacher (ed.): From the diversity of musical culture. Festschrift for Josef Kuckertz . Ursula Müller-Speiser, Anif / Salzburg 1992, pp. 81-102
  • Christian Poché: Simsimiyya. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Vol. 24. Macmillan Publishers, London 2001
  • Ali Jihad Racy: The Lyre of the Arab Gulf: Historical Roots, Geographical Links, and the Local Context. In: Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje (Ed.): Turn up the Volume. A Celebration of African Music. UCLA, Fowler Museum of Cultural History, Los Angeles 1999, pp. 134-139
  • Amnon Shiloah: The Simsimiyya. A Stringed Instrument of the Red Sea Area. In: Asian Music IV. No. 1, 1972, pp. 15-26

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mohammed Maraqten: Statuette. Registration number: 1930.0613.16. The British Museum
  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. 64
  3. ↑ Braune, p. 89
  4. ↑ Braune, p. 90
  5. ^ 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
  6. ↑ Osama Kamel: Searching for Ramadan sabils. Al Ahram Weekly, May 17-23 September 2009
  7. ^ Magda Saleh: Dance in Egypt. In: Virginia Danielson, Dwight Reynolds, Scott Marcus (Eds.): The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music . Volume 6: The Middle East. Garland, London 2002, p. 623
  8. ↑ Martin Stokes: La Simsimiyya de Port-Said. Ensemble Al-Tanburah. Discussion of the CD of the Institut du Monde Arab, Paris 1999
  9. ↑ Tim Cumming: Bedouin Jerry Can Band: Reinventing ancient musical traditions to breathe new life into Egypt's folk scene. The Independent, October 12, 2007
  10. ↑ Janet Topp Fargion: The Music of Zenj: Arab-African crossovers in the music of Zanzibar. In: Journal des africanistes, Vol. 72, No. 2, 2002, pp. 203-212, here p. 205