Tabl
Tabl ( Arabic طبل, DMG ṭabl , plural ṭubūl ) is the general name in Arabic for membranophones regardless of their design. The one- and two-headed drums have their origins in the ancient Orient . During the Islamic period , the playing styles of military bands, religious folk music and classical Arabic music , in which drums almost always play a special role. Derived from the word ṭabl , among other things, the different drums t'bol , which are widespread in the Maghreb , and the Indian tabla , which is played in pairs, are used . In the Arab world, membranophones can be divided into three main groups according to their design: double-headed tubular drums , single-headed kettle drums and one or more rarely double-headed frame drums .
etymology
The Arabic word ṭabl is related to the Aramaic tablā and the Akkadian tabālu . In addition to this Semitic origin in the word meaning “drum”, there is an attempt to derive ṭabl from Greek tabla and Latin tabula , which is translated as “board”. With the corresponding meaning, "Tablett" and "Tafel" emerged from this in German. The term ṭabl can still be found in the European-medieval drum names tabel, tabor and further in tambour, tambourine . With article, so as aṭ-ṭabl, the Arabic word meaning “boiler drum” found its way into some European languages: Spanish atabal, Italian ataballa and old French attabal. The Tuareg used to call the men's war drum in Tamascheq ettebel or ṭobol .
In today's Turkish language the frame drum is called davul , developed from the medieval Ottoman ṭabıl, ṭabl. The Persian drum family is accordingly called duhul . The South Indian double-headed drum dhavul, also known as tavil , also has a similar-sounding name . Another relationship of the tavil beyond the name can be seen in their interaction with wind instruments, which follows the same Turkish-Central Asian pattern.
history
Old Egypt
The first traditional drum player is mentioned in an inscription from the ancient Egyptian 4th dynasty during the reign of Pharaoh Cheops (26th century BC) as caretaker Merj. In the pictorial representation, he is sitting in front of his mistress Ifi, playing a clay tumbler drum and presumably singing along with it. The instrument is the forerunner of the darbuka, which is popular in Arabic folk music today . A few decades later, towards the end of the 4th Dynasty, the oldest known professional musician Chufu-ʿ also lived. He was a highly respected flute player and leader of court singers. In the Pharaoh's orchestra there were specialists for the various musical instruments and for every activity, including clapping hands and stamping feet. In the ritual music at the temple, harpers , lute players, trumpeters, drummers, hand clappers and women with sistras appeared alongside the singers . Singers were generally held in higher esteem, but there were also important instrumentalists who are known by name to this day through inscriptions. Emhab, who played the large barrel drum in the 17th dynasty (16th century BC), accompanied his master, a wandering actor. Although Emhab held a low position, he was obviously wealthy enough to have his name immortalized on a stele.
Mesopotamia
In Mesopotamia , the oldest percussion instruments were rattles played by dancers . They were found together with harps and lyres in the royal tombs of Ur from the 3rd millennium BC. Found. Drums are more common in illustrations than two-handed rattles. A clay vessel from the Jemdet Nasr period (around 3000 BC) found in Tell Agrab shows three naked women holding up an object interpreted as a round tambourine with their left hand and hitting it with a stick in their right hand. The representation could be considered the oldest representation of a drum, but it cannot be clearly interpreted. On the other hand, frame drums are clearly recognizable on numerous illustrations from the beginning of the first III period (around 2000 BC). They probably replaced the rattles previously used by the dancers at cult events. The individual sites and locations indicate that the dancers belonged to the cult of a mother goddess . The frame drums shown are circular and are held by the women with both hands in front of their chests, so it is quite possible that it was not percussion instruments but rattles filled with grains that were shaken.
On steles of the Sumerian rulers Ur-Nammu and Gudea a huge, almost head-high frame drum can be seen, both heads of which are played with the hands of a player standing on one side. Such large drums disappeared in Mesopotamia after the Ur III period.
The small frame drum became the common percussion instrument in the Babylonian period in the first half of the 2nd millennium and spread from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean and as far as Egypt. What was once the double-headed rattle of the early III era has become the most important percussion instrument. In a standardized size, the tambourine consists of a hoop with a circular winding of pliable material. A depilated and air-dried animal skin is stretched over this. Terracotta figures from Babylon and Nippur no longer show the frame drum as a rattle held in both hands, but held on the left shoulder with the left hand and struck with the right hand without a stick. It is possible that the dancer has already practiced the current style of playing by hitting the edge of the head with the fingers of her left hand and the middle with her right hand. This enables light and dark-sounding tones to be generated at different volumes. On a figure from the time of Hammurabi (18th century BC) a player is holding a tambourine at head height far from her. The dancer appears to accompany a lyre in a cultic context that is less strictly regulated than in the past. Similar playing techniques are also known from images of the Assyrians living in the north ; With both peoples, the frame drums, previously used exclusively in cult and as a soloist, seem to have increasingly been used in conjunction with melodic instruments and also for other occasions.
A large standing tumbler drum on an inscription from about 300 BC. BC, which gives priests instructions for sacrificial ceremonies, represents the sacred drum lilissu , which - although otherwise only depicted once - must have already existed in Babylonian times. The ritual for Ea , the god of wisdom and music, and for other Babylonian gods, in which a black bull was sacrificed, is described in detail . The peeled and cleaned skin of the animal was pulled over the drum body that had already been manufactured and fastened with wooden pegs that were punched through the skin into holes in the body. Finally, a bull tendon in a throat at the edge of the drum provided the necessary tension for the head. The divine bull had become holy ilissu , which only a certain priest was allowed to play. It is the oldest known beaker drum and model of the later timpani.
Several Assyrian images show the frame drum on reliefs of the kings Sin-ahhe-eriba (r. 705–680) and Ashurbanipal . Two other drum types on Assyrian bas-reliefs are a single-headed narrow long tubular drum and a presumably two-headed shorter drum. Both hung, fastened to a belt, at the waist of the player who could hit them with both hands from above. Their importance is likely to have been relatively minor. On the wall relief of Assurbanipal from the 7th century BC At the North Palace in Nineveh , a quartet of musicians consisting of a lyre player, a frame drummer and two musicians with cymbals of different sizes played with both hands are shown.
Early Islamic period
Several Greek historians, among them Herodotus in the 5th century BC. And Strabo in the 1st century BC Chr. Emphasized the quality of Iranian musical instruments. Alexander the Great is said to have appreciated the loud volume of Iranian barrel drums in his military bands. In ancient Greece , in contrast to the Orient, drums were not very common. On Sassanid rock reliefs by Taq-e Bostan , large and small barrel drums can be seen, the players of which belong to a military band. The best-known example of an Arabic takeover in early Islamic times is the Persian lute barbaṭ , from whose round shape the Arabic ʿūd developed. In addition, there were cultural influences in the meeting of Chaldeans , Nabataeans , Syrians, Palmyrenian and South Arabian tribes. Arameans and Jews in particular preserved old traditions even after the Arab conquest . At the same time, musicians from the conquered peoples came to the larger cities and shaped Arabic music there with their playing styles .
The musical enrichment by foreign peoples is the subject of the Islamic legend on the origin of music, which is mentioned in a Turkish source from the 17th century. According to this, in addition to Bilal al-Habaschi , the first muezzin and singer from Africa, three musicians lived in the vicinity of the Prophet who, like Bilal, have become the forefathers of music. Ḥamza ibn Yatīm, the ancestor of all singers, is said to have performed at family celebrations, as did Bābā ʿAmr, whose instrument was the round frame drum al-dāʾira . He supposedly became the patron saint of all drummers. There was also the Indian timpani player Bābā Sawandīk, who took part in the Prophet's military expeditions with his large kūs (pl. Kūsāt ) timpani . He is said to have been buried near Mosul .
The pre- and early Islamic Arabs mostly listened to singing girls ( qaina , Pl. Qiyān ) who - compared to Mesopotamia - repeated a few verses in vocal variations for hours in unison or octave-spaced chants in the musically underdeveloped Hejaz . The rhythmic accompaniment was formed by barrel drums, the rectangular frame drums (daff) and qaḍīb, beats that set the beat. Occasionally the dancers played metal rattles ( ṣinj , Pl. Ṣunūj , today qarqaba in the Maghreb ) and cymbals. At that time, ṭabl only referred to the barrel drums. All three rhythm instruments were also used in military music.
Designs
Single-headed drums
Of the drums covered on one side with a membrane, the most common ones are those with a tubular body, including cup drums that taper to a slender base and kettle drums with a closed bottom. The name, first mentioned in the 8th century, for a drum that can be identified as a single-headed tubular drum is kabar . The name is possibly derived from the large Ethiopian church drum kebero , which is beaten with hands. It was distinguished from the hourglass-shaped drum kūba . At the beginning of the 13th century, the Andalusian scholar asch-Shakundi († 1231/32 in Córdoba ) mentioned a drum akwāl, which is still known today in Maghrebian folk music in Berber languages as agwāl . This cup-shaped drum of about 60 centimeters in length is in Algeria gullāl and further east tabdaba called.
A fundamental problem with assigning names is that the Arabic instrument designations were not systematically assigned according to the type of sound generation, but rather according to the function of the musical instruments in the orchestra. Thus, in addition to the drum, the string instruments ʿūd and barba also belonged to the context of kūba . Similarly, the consonants strain could zmr in the basic meaning "sing (human voice)" both the reed instrument mizmar , and a stringed instrument called ZAMR (Pl. Zumūr ) mean. In the small orchestra, the highest instrument was called sibs , regardless of whether it was a flute or an oboe. The word dirridj , which appears in early Arabic scripts, is interpreted as a single-headed beaker drum and as a long-necked ṭunbūr ( tanbur , tambura ). It is known in similar spellings in the Maghreb. In the rest of North Africa and the Middle East, this tumbler is called darbuka (darabukka), in Iran dunbak (tombak) . The traditional darbuka is a clay drum with a glued-on membrane. It is used in folk music and in Andalusian music .
The rhythms played in folk music generally follow the singing voice, but the rhythm patterns of the accompanying instruments, which are structured in fixed cycles ( wazn, pl. Awzan ), occasionally leave the vocal guidelines. Darabuka soloists improvise virtuously within a certain form. Drum duets in folk music are called griḥah . In the dialogue called “mother and edge”, one drum plays the basic structure, the other creates a coordinated division.
Historians primarily report that the kūba hourglass drum was forbidden for Muslims to play it. Together with the frame drum ( duff ) it was the accompanying instrument of the "effeminate" singers and was banned in the early days of Islam. A hadith directed against the musician class of the "effeminate" (muḫannaṯūn) condemned their performances and made the men in women's clothes become outsiders of society. Many were banished from the cities or had to flee to avoid persecution. At other times, the first professional musicians in Islamic times were highly valued at the ruling courts for their art of singing. The most famous among them was called Ṭuwais (632–710). He created a new style of music in Medina by adding an independent rhythm ( iqāʿ ) to his singing . Before the rhythm was subordinate to the meter. The result was “graceful music” ( ġināʾ ar-raqīq ), also “artistic music” ( ġināʾ al-mutqan ). In the 10th century the kūba was also called ṭabl al-muḫannaṯ . At that time it is said to have been small and slim in the middle, but in the 13th century it was depicted as a kettle drum.
In the Abbasid period it was considered a privilege for local rulers to command a military band (ṭabl khānā) as a sign of their rulership. Before the 10th century, this honor was reserved for the caliph alone. At times the groups played with kettle drums ( dabdāb, Pl. Dabādib ) during prayer times. Under the Seljuks , this privilege was extended and musical performances with a regular schedule ( naubat, Sg. Nauba ) turned into impressive presentations of power. Large kettle drums ( kūs, Pl. Kūsāt ) were used. The scholar and traveler Nasir i-Khusrau († after 1072) gave the following instruments of the Fatimid military bands : zinc (būq) , the reed instrument surnā , the drums ṭabl, duhul and kūs, and the cymbal kāsa .
The kūrgā, popular with the Mongols, was even larger than the Arabic kūs kūs , and Ibn Battuta probably referred to the same drum as ṭabl al-kabīr (“big drum”). Orders were given with this royal instrument, which according to another description was almost a man's height.
The highlight of Arabic illumination are the illustrations by the painter Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti of the Maqāmāt ("assemblies") of al-Hariri , created in Baghdad in 1237. The 7th Maqāma shows a group of riders with horses and donkeys with long metal trumpets (būq al-nafīr) and large kettle drums celebrate a festival. The drums are struck with thin sticks bent at the end. The 31st Maqāma shows an even livelier scene in which a pilgrim caravan, making music with the same instruments , is on its way to Mecca on camels and donkeys .
Specifically named boiler drums except the Kus the deduced from the name of large boiler drum kūsāt , further, the ad-Dabdab , the tabl al-markab and the pairs used flat round drums to-naqqara (Pl. Nuqqāirāt ). In war dances the flat ṭabl šāmī, struck with two sticks, was played . The membrane of the kettledrum with a suspension rope, which comes from South Arabia, was stretched with a leather strap. A similar small drum is the ṭabl al-bāz ( bāz stands for the kettle shape) , which is played today in Egypt and on the Arabian Peninsula during Ramadan and by dervishes with a leather mallet or a thin staff .
In Oman , in addition to the ṭabl al-bāz, some long cylindrical standing drums are in use, which are called musundu and owe their shape and style of play to the country's historical connections to the East African Swahili coast . The body of these drums consists of a hollowed-out wooden trunk or several wooden planks glued together. The membrane is attached with a row of wooden pins running around the edge, which are inserted into drill holes in the body. Before playing, the drummer tunes his instrument according to the African tradition by heating it over a fire or by applying voice paste to the membrane made of cowhide or camel skin. Most musundu drums are played with the hands while standing, with the exception of the downwardly conical musunda at-tanbura , which is struck with one hand and a rubber stick in the other hand.
It is unclear when the name ṭabl and the drum so named came to India in the course of the Islamic conquests . According to an Indian legend, sometime after the 14th century, a musician separated a double-headed mridangam drum into two parts and formed the small cylindrical single-headed drum tab-bo-la , which is now known as tabla (also dayan , "right") together with the slightly larger one Kesseltrommel bayan ("left") forms the drum pair also called tabla . Images of similar Indian kettle drums are much older. At the end of the 18th century, the tabla pair was popular in popular music in Muslim rulers in India. According to a description by the Flemish painter Balthazar Solvyns (1760-1824), the contemptuous "Loutchias" called common people made music with the tubla pair of kettle drums , which consisted of a clay drum and a wooden drum.
Double-headed drums
The most common are straight double-headed cylinder drums like the earlier ṭabl ṭawīl and those with a bulbous center, which are called barrel drums. Less common are hourglass-shaped, double-headed drums, such as the ṭabl al-mu dieannaṯ, which has been recorded in the Maghreb for the 13th century. An hourglass-shaped drum called ġūwāl (Pl. Gwāl ) is used in Moroccan folk and ritual music.
The Abbasid war drum, played in military bands ( ṭabl khānā ) and reported in the 9th century , probably had a long cylindrical shape . In the 13th and 14th centuries it was depicted along with kettle drums, trumpets and cymbals. The French music scholar Guillaume André Villoteau (1759–1839) called the cylinder drum , which was still popular at the beginning of the 19th century, as ṭabl al-turkī (" Turkish drum"). It was played with curved mallets. Since then, this long form has been replaced by a shorter war drum, known as the duhul since the 11th century and played by military musicians in the Fatimid era . The shorter cylinder drum is known in modern day Egypt as ṭabl al-baladī . In the Baladi dance style, she rhythmizes the accompanying music played by the fiddle rubāba and the reed instrument mizmar . Other historical names of the short cylinder drum in Persia are danbāl ; Firdausi (940 / 41–1020) probably understood something similar by tabīr . According to the Ottoman writer Evliya Çelebi (1611 to after 1683) and other sources, the Turkish dāwul dates from the 14th century. It was played with a mallet ( čangal ) and a broom (daynak) . The modern North Indian dhol , which is used in bhangra music when struck with sticks , and the smaller dholak , which is struck with the hands, are related . Large double-headed cylinder drums ultimately came to Europe with the Turkish janissary music .
In Yemen , cylinder drums are generally called ṭabl , according to their size, for example, in mocha they are divided into rabbās (large), ġazāl (medium) and ṭabl ṣaġīr (small). The frame heights are less than 50 centimeters. In the typical drum orchestras of the Yemeni lowlands Tihama , they are used together with one or two kettle drums (generally mirfaʿ ) and the stem drum ṣaḥfa .
The double-headed cylinder drums are in a general musical connection, as they often appear at celebrations and processions in conjunction with double reed instruments of the surnais type . Such combinations come from the Maghreb ( t'bol ) across Central and East Asia (with the wind instrument taepyeongso ) to South India ( tavil ).
The descendants of black African slaves in the Maghreb call the cylinder drum ganga (Pl. Gāngatān ). Sufi brotherhoods play them in street processions and pilgrimages. In the Derdeba ceremony of the Moroccan Gnawa , the powerful drumbeats of a ganga begin and end the sacred part.
Frame drums
The most common name for a frame drum like the tambourine is daff ( duff, Pl. Dufūf ). A double-sided square drum was already known in ancient Egypt, as it is still played by women in the Maghreb under the name deff . The frame drum has been a woman's instrument since ancient times; an ṭabl al-nikah ( nikah , "wedding") accompanies dances at Arab weddings today. In Afghanistan, until the 19th century, women only owned the frame drum dāireh in a musical culture that was separate from men ; at most they only played the goblet-shaped clay drum zerbaghali . The frame drum ( Hebrew tof ) was the rhythm instrument for the joyful dance and the chants of the women around the biblical prophet Mirjam ( Ex 15.20 EU ). If a circular frame drum was meant instead of the square shape, which was more common in the Middle Ages, it was more precisely designated with the addition duff murabaʿ .
Europe also got to know the Turkish double-headed frame drum šendef through Janissary music . According to other sources, it was called abū karūn ("giant horn "), New Arabic spelling of the Turkish drum is at-trānpeta or at-trumbēṭa.
Most of the numerous frame drums today are circular and one-sided. Some have as the tar (also Tarr, Tarr ) over a tambourine made of slightly curved metal plates, as in the classical Arabic music played riqq . Other flat frame drums are the North African bendir , which is equipped with snarling strings under the goat or sheep skin membrane. The ǧirbāl and the Moroccan ḍīf also have snarling sides . The Egyptian mazhar , like many frame drums, belongs to the religious music of Sufi orders, which is part of the Dhikr (worship ceremony).
literature
- Henry George Farmer : “Ṭabl”. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition , Vol. 10, Brill, Leiden 2000, pp. 32-34
- Henry George Farmer: A History of Arabian Music to the XIIIth Century. Luzac & Co., London 1929 ( Online at Archive.org )
- 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, pp. 1-134
- Hans Hickmann: Ancient Egyptian Music. Ibid., Pp. 135-170
- Wilhelm Stauder: The music of the Sumer, Babylonians and Assyrians. Ibid., Pp. 171-244
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Farmer, EI (2), Vol. 10, p. 32
- ↑ Farmer, EI (2), Vol. 10, pp. 32f
- ↑ Korkut Budgay: Ottoman. Textbook: Introduction to the basics of literary language. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1999, p. 211
- ↑ Hickmann, Altägyptische Musik, pp. 143–148, 152
- ↑ Stauder, The Music of the Sumer, Babylonian and Assyrian, pp. 182-185
- ↑ Stauder, Die Musik der Sumer, Babylonier und Assyrer, pp. 197–200
- ^ Stauder, Die Musik der Sumer, Babylonier und Assyrer, p. 208
- ^ Hans Hickmann, The Music of the Arab-Islamic Area, p. 16; Farmer 1929, p. 38
- ↑ Farmer 1929, pp. 13, 16
- ↑ Hans Engel : The position of the musician in the Arab-Islamic area. Publishing house for systematic musicology, Bonn 1987, p. 132
- ↑ Farmer, EI (2), Vol. 10, pp. 32f
- ↑ Hickmann, The Music of the Arab-Islamic Area, pp. 95f
- ↑ Hans Engel, pp. 70f, 265
- ↑ Farmer, EI (2), Vol. 10, p. 33
- ↑ Farmer 1929, pp. 207f
- ^ Richard Ettinghausen : Arabic painting. (The Art Treasures of Asia) Editions d'Art Albert Skira, Geneva 1979, pp. 117–120
- ↑ Group 2: Single-skinned drums. ( Memento of the original from July 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Oman Center for Traditional Music
- ↑ James Blades: Percussion Instruments and Their History. Kahn & Averill, London 1992, p. 138
- ^ Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr., Stephen M. Slawek: Instruments and Music Culture in Eighteenth Century India: The Solvyns Portraits. In: Asian Music, Vol. 20, No. 1, autumn 1988 - winter 1989, pp. 1-92, here pp. 42f
- ↑ Farmer, EI (2), Vol. 10, p. 32 f.
- ^ Jürgen Elsner: Drumming and drumming in Yemen. In: Rüdiger Schumacher (ed.): From the diversity of musical culture. Festschrift for Josef Kuckertz . Ursula Müller-Speiser, Anif / Salzburg 1992, p. 193
- ↑ Hickmann, The Music of the Arab-Islamic Area, p. 62
