Tanbura

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Originally a six-string tanbūra from Oman , Bait Al Baranda Museum , Muscat .

Tanbura ( Arabic الطنبورة, DMG tanbūra ), also Sudanese Arabic tanbūr, tanbūra , furthermore tambūra, tumbura, is a five- or six- stringed bowl lyre , whose home is probably the Nubians in Upper Egypt and Sudan , where a small, five-string variant of the lyre in the Nubian languages is called kisir . From there, the tanbūra, which does not belong to a specific ethnic group, spread along the Red Sea in Djibouti and Yemen as well as on the coast of the Persian Gulf in southern Iraq and in the Gulf States . It is used to accompany songs in light music and is preferred in all countries mentioned in the zār cult of women, a healing ritual anchored in African folk Islam . The lyre tambura , used ritually in Nubia, is larger than the kisir and has six strings.

The dialect word tanbūra is derived from the high Arabic tunbūr , which has primarily stood for long-necked loud since the Middle Ages . The old Arabic name for the lyre, rababa , is also in use today, especially in Sudan . A lyre was already known to ancient Egyptian musicians around 2000 BC. Known from Egypt and via Nubia further south, where it occurs in different forms in East Africa. In terms of play and design, the tanbūra is related to the simsimiyya, mainly played on the Sinai Peninsula and in Saudi Arabia , and the krar in Ethiopia .

Origin and Etymology

Nubian tanbūra player in Cairo. Watercolor painting by Carl Haag , 1858

The oldest images of lyres in Mesopotamia come from the Sumerians in the royal tombs of Ur and are dated to the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. Dated. They were large standing lyres and small portable lyres with four strings. Around the middle of the 3rd millennium (Ur-I time) the lyres had five strings. The first ancient Egyptian lyres were asymmetrical like the Sumerian ones; later, like the lyres of ancient Greece, they had symmetrical yoke arms of the same shape. The ancient Greek lyra was a bowl veil with a turtle shell as its body, and the kinnor , often mentioned in the Old Testament , probably meant a box-shaped, flat-bottomed veil. Presumably, the lyre came with immigrants (initially known as Hyksos ) from the Near East from the middle of the 1st millennium BC. Until the turn of the ages to Egypt and further south. Today lyres in Africa only occur in the Red Sea and East Africa .

Nubia may have played a mediating role in the spread of the lyre. The Nubian word for lyre, kisir or kissar, is traced back to kithara , as a form of the lyre was called in ancient Greece. This makes it possible for the lyre to spread in Egypt from the rule of the Ptolemies acting as mediators (from 332 BC). Kithara leads through Arabic qitar and Spanish guitarra to both " guitar " and " zither ". Frescoes from the Nubian Empire of Meroe (4th century BC to 4th century AD) show lyres. From there lyres probably got to Ethiopia, where they have been mentioned in manuscripts since around the 15th century. Around this time traveling south Nilotes brought the lyre from South Sudan - about the shell lyre tom of the Shilluk - or from Ethiopia to Kenya and Uganda in the area of Lake Victoria . The distribution of the lyre thus extends from Egypt ( simsimiyya ) to Sudan ( tanbūra ), South Sudan ( tom ), Ethiopia ( krar, beganna ), Somalia , northwestern Kenya ( pagan ), southwestern Kenya ( nyatiti ), Uganda ( endongo ), northern Tanzania to the northeast of the Congo .

Tanbūra goes back to Persian tanbūr and Arabic tunbūr . In early Islamic Arabic literature, the word tunbūr, which was adopted from the Sassanid period, was first used to describe a musical instrument in the 7th century. Tunbūr is related to the Sumerian word pan-tur ("small bow"); This is made up of pan, the name of the old West Asian bow harp and tur, “small”, in order to distinguish the so-called portable long-necked lute from the larger harps. Derivations of pan-tur can be found in the names of the ancient Greek stringed instrument pandura ( pandora in the European Middle Ages ) and the long-necked lutes pondur and panduri today . Apart from the Arabic lyre, all pronunciation variants around tunbūr stood for lute instruments: from the Balkans ( tambura ) to Turkey ( tanbur ), the Kurdish provinces in Iran ( tembur ), northern Afghanistan ( dambura ), southern Pakistan ( damburag and tanburo ) to India ( tanpura and tandura ). The latter names for Indian long-necked lutes did not come to India until after the Middle Ages , but the double meaning of the word context tunbūr for stringed instruments and drums could be traced back to the ancient Indian Sanskrit word damaru for a small hourglass drum , which has been preserved up to tambourine for a frame drum . According to another assumption, tunbūr, tambūra and the like go back to tumba , which means “pumpkin” and “calabash” in North Indian languages ​​and gave the name to the single-stringed Indian plucked instrument tumbi .

Later, in Ottoman times, the word tanbūr with long-necked lutes spread again in Egypt. European explorers were the first to mention lyres called tanbūra . Carsten Niebuhr (1733–1815) reported in a travel description to Arabia and other surrounding countries (1774–1778) of “a kind of harp” which he saw in the Nubian town of Dunqula and which was called kussir by the Nubians and tambura by the Arabs . The Swiss Orient traveler Jean Louis Burckhardt (1784-1817, Travels in Nubia, London 1819) found that the Nubians had no other musical instruments apart from a five-stringed tamboura covered with gazelle skin , a flute and a kettle drum . The line drawing on the edge of the text shows a five-string lyre with a round body, as it still occurs today. The name of the Schilluk lyre, tom or thum , is probably a short form of tambūra .

The Arabic word rabāb is based on the consonant root rbb . The names of numerous crossed spit sounds and some plucked long-necked sounds from Morocco ( ribab ) via the Arab countries of the Middle East ( rebāb ), Central Asia ( rawap ) to Southeast Asia ( rebab ) are derived from this. According to Ibn Chordadhbeh (around 820 - around 912), the lyre was a Byzantine musical instrument in the 10th century , which he calls al-lura in Arabic and equates it with an Arabic instrument called rabāb . This would mean that Nubia would have retained an old Arabic name for the lyre, which otherwise was mostly used for later strings, because rabāb (a) is the more common name for the lyre compared to tambūra in Sudan today .

Design and style of play

Five-string Nubian kisir. Drawing by François-Joseph Fétis in Histoire générale de la musique, 1869.
Five-string kisir of the Arab Shaigiya tribe in Nubia. Drawing in a British travelogue from 1835.

The shape of the tanbūra is similar everywhere; Depending on the region, there are considerable differences in size, ranging from 70 centimeters in length in Sudan to 140 centimeters in Yemen. The kisir played in Nubia to accompany the song is one of the smaller lyres and always has five strings. In the zār cult, a larger lyre ( called tambura in Nubia ) with six strings is generally used.

The circular bowl-shaped body (Arabic ghadah , Nubian koos like the food bowl) of the Sudanese lyre consists of a halved calabash, a carved wooden bowl (in Nubia from the wood of the Nile acacia , Acacia nilotica ) or alternatively made of metal (sheet metal bowl, hubcap) and can Reach up to 50 centimeters in diameter. Some museum specimens have a turtle shell as a body. The two yoke arms (Arabic digla or dagāla ), which touch within the body, protrude from the ceiling at the upper edge and form a symmetrical, equilateral triangle with the cross bar (yoke, yoke arch, Arabic farmal ). The crossbar is plugged onto the yoke arms with precisely fitting holes and wrapped with a cord at the connection point. In addition, the corners are fixed with triangular strips of fabric. The ceiling membrane of the Nubian kisir consists of camel or cow skin, which is pulled up when wet and tensioned against a ring on the underside. Two circular sound holes ( ʿain, "eye") are usually cut out in the lower area of ​​the membrane . The strings (Nubian siliki ) consist of intestine, plant fibers, wire and antelope or buffalo tendons. Wire strings are common in Nubia today, gut strings were mostly used until the end of the 19th century. The strings run from an iron ring (Arabic tartschiya, Nubian gede ) on the lower edge over a bridge (Arabic kursī, Nubian kac, "donkey") placed on the membrane at an acute angle towards the crossbar. There they are - as usual already in Ancient Egypt - (Arabic on a fabric strip mghadda, Nubian feekee ) knotted, which is wound several times around the pole. To tune, the fabric knots (tuning knobs) must be turned around the bar until the desired tension is achieved. Pegs (tuning rods) inserted between the fabric knots for fine adjustment, as known from Sumerian box-type eggs and common with the old Ethiopian krar and beganna , are not used. As a third way of attaching the strings to the crossbar, there are instruments made in Khartoum with rotating tuning pegs that are inserted into holes in the bar. Some Sudanese lyres are hung on the yoke arms with feathers, necklaces of glass beads, colorful ribbons and small bells . Old, ritually used lyres can be literally overloaded with pendants of all kinds.

Bahrain is known in the Persian Gulf for professionally made tanbūras . The lyres, which weigh around nine kilograms, consist of a very large round wooden bowl and an above-average long yoke. The body is covered with cowhide, which is braced with strips of skin on a metal ring on the underside. The lyre has five pentatonic strings and sometimes a sixth string, resulting in a range of one octave. The seated musician holds the instrument placed next to him on the floor vertically upwards. His left arm rests on a pillow that lies on the upper edge of the body. He uses a piece of cow horn as a pick.

Old Ethiopian lyre krar or kissar with turtle shell, 19th century, Kunsthistorisches Museum , Vienna.

The player of ancient Greek kithara stroked all strings in both directions with a pick in his right hand. With the fingers of his left hand, he touched all the strings from the back that should not be audible, leaving only the string that was to be played free. This added a rhythmic rasping noise from the other strings to their tone. If he pressed the strings harder with his left hand, he bent the frame a little inwards, which relaxed the free string and produced a deeper tone. This playing technique is also typical for the tanbūra and occurs otherwise in southern Ethiopia and occasionally in East Africa, while in most East African lyres (such as the endongo and the southern Sudanese tom ) the strings are usually plucked from both sides with the fingers.

The Sudanese lyre is held upright, at right angles away from the body and horizontally or slightly diagonally upwards by the player standing or sitting on the floor. The five-string kisir is tuned pentatonic in whole tones (i.e. anhemitonic) , whereby the tolerances can be considerable. A common tuning corresponds to the European notation e 1  - g - a - c 1  - d 1 . The lower string (e 1 ) in this position is muted with the little finger of the left hand. The ring finger mutes the string lower by a sixth (g), the middle finger the next string (a) a whole tone higher, the index finger the fourth string (c 1 ) a minor third higher and the thumb the top string (d 1 ) a whole tone higher. The Nubians name the strings from bottom to top with weera ("one"), miskin ("poor", "weak sound"), tusko ("three"), kemso ("four") and dicca ("five"). The pick is made of animal skin or, today, plastic. The melody develops from the changing sequence of the five available tones.

The two playing techniques do not exist strictly separate from each other. Experienced tanbūra or krar players occasionally use both methods of sound production in quick succession; often in such a way that the player strikes the main melody and the rhythm with the pick in the right hand, while in between he plucks the melody filling nuances with the fingers of the left hand. Furthermore, in some pieces, empty strings can be plucked individually with the pick. The more creative way of playing, in which individual strings are plucked, is on the advance.

Nubian music

Five-string Nubian kisir with thick fabric tuning knobs. Origin Kassala

In the Nubia region in northern Sudan, only a few traditional musical instruments are known, as Johann Ludwig Burckhardt noted as early as 1819. In addition to the lyre, these are the frame drum tār and the single-headed clay drum daluka with a bowl-shaped body made of air-dried clay, open at the bottom. Women accompany their songs rhythmically with clapping hands and traditionally play the daluka as the only musical instrument , unless it is replaced by much louder-sounding tin cans. Formerly regarded as Nubian "National Instrument" Kisir is widely today in the Sudan Arab popular music through the Arabic lute 'ūd replaced, which has taken over the role as vocal accompaniment and comes together with European instruments used.

Nubian music is gender segregated. The men's musical styles include dance songs that are performed a cappella , especially at weddings ( bali ), accompanied by kisir or tār , or performed instrumentally with these instruments, clapping hands and stamping their feet. In addition to weddings as the main occasions for dance events in large societies, men sing songs in small groups in retreats while drinking date wine ( kalakiya ), which in Sudan is a home- brewed alcoholic drink with a long tradition alongside millet beer ( merisa ). For female sphere include songs while doing housework, at weddings and circumcisions in adopting and when returning from Mecca pilgrims are sung and lullabies and Czar songs.

In addition to this functional division, there are regional stylistic peculiarities. The Dongolawi speakers in the Dunqula region use the kisir as the leading accompaniment instrument in a musical style that is more Arabic-influenced than elsewhere. Further north, between the 2nd and 3rd cataracts , the kisir is also the leading instrument in the area of ​​the regional languages ​​Sukkot and Mahas , but here it is rhythmically supplemented by clapping hands and stamping feet. At least four men provide the rhythm and at the same time form a choir that takes turns with the lead singer. Even further north, in Wadi Halfa on the Sudanese border, one or two solo singers alternate with a choir. They are not accompanied by a lyre, but by two frame drums of different sizes .

The Hadendoa , a sub-group of the Bedscha in the northeast, call their small five-string lyre bassankob ( basamkub or bāsān-kōb ) and play it for entertainment like the kisir . A Hadendoa instrument is 44 centimeters long and the width measured on the yoke bar is 30 centimeters. The body shell is flat at 11 centimeters. The heads of the bedjah used to own another musical instrument that was both a ceremonial object and a symbol of power, large kettle drums called naqqāra or nahas . During his stay in the Abyssinian highlands around 1770 , James Bruce found the appropriate use of the Ethiopian kettle drum ( nagarit ) and the lyre for entertainment on festive occasions. Kettle drums ( noggaara ) with related names belong to the music ensemble in the zār cult.

In the border area between southern Sudan and Ethiopia, round dances are accompanied by a male lyre player or by ensembles with calabash wind instruments such as the Berta with the lyre abangaran ( bangkarang ) and the natural trumpet waza . The neighboring Gumuz also play their lyre jangar or sangwe using the pick technique . For obsession rituals, the gumuz supplement the lyre game with three to four open-ended calabashes into which they blow or hum.

The small five-string lyres that correspond to kisir and are played with a plectrum also have different names in the Kurdufan and Darfur regions . Young men playing the song accompaniment with the Tumtum- Nuba the fedefede, in Ngile Language the -Sprechern bene bene and at the Miri-Nuba (in South Kordofan s) kazandik .

The first records with music from Sudan were recorded around 1928 by two tanbūra players. From the 1930s onwards, the Nubian lyre experienced increasing competition from the Arabic lute ʿūd, which dominates urban music today. Against the trend, efforts were made to keep the rural tradition of the lyre game alive in Khartoum. For this purpose, a music club for the lyre called Nadi at-Tanbūra ("Tanbura Club") was opened in 1997 in the state capital . Music ensembles have also been founded with the focus on the tanbūra and who endeavor to expand their playing techniques. The most important kisir player is Muhammad Gubara (* 1947), whose trademark is a boyish high, pressed voice.

Tsar cult on the Red Sea

The Arabic word zār , like the zār cult, comes from Ethiopia ( Amharic zar , Somali saar ) and goes back to the name of the old Cushitic sky god, according to another view, zār is from Arabic zāra, "visit" and ziyāra , dem "Visiting a holy Islamic place" derived. A country of origin cannot be reliably specified because zār is associated with the Bori cult in Nigeria and other African cults of possession. The zār cult is mentioned in Volume 7 of the Description de l'Égypte (“Description of Egypt”) published in 1822 , which was the result of the Egyptian expedition led by Napoleon between 1798 and 1801 . Apart from that, the cult was first demonstrably observed by Europeans in the Ethiopian region of Shewa in 1839 . The next following note about the cult in Egypt can be found in a letter dated 1869 from the English writer Lucie Gordon (1821–1869). The first detailed description by the tropical doctor Carl Benjamin Klunzinger , published in 1877, is based on his observations in the port city of al-Qusair on the Red Sea in the 1860s. In contrast to bori , almost only women take part in zār and the - always male - spirits are invoked but not worshiped. In the Islamic context, the zār spirits are considered to be a group of jinn or are related to them. Only a woman can establish contact with the spirit as the leader ( shaicha , in Egypt also kudiah or kūdyat zār, "superior of the zār") of the ceremony and "mediator".

The tanbūra is played by men practically everywhere. The Arabic word miʿzafa ( miʿzaf, plural maʿāzif ) meant a string instrument in pre-Islamic times, perhaps a kind of psaltery or, more specifically, a lyre. Christian Poché uses the origin of the word miʿzafa from ʿāzf , meaning “the voice of the jinn”, to establish an ancient magical relationship between the lyre and the jinn. The Arabic miʿzafa is therefore a mythical successor to the kinnor played by King David . According to Poché , the biblical lyre, the medieval Arabic miʿzafa and today's tanbūra are ritually related musical instruments that lead a dialogue with the spirits and have a calming effect on them. The grammarian Abū Tālib al-Mufaddal ibn Salama († around 904) explains in his book Kitāb al-malāhī that the miʿzafa is generally rare among the Arabs, but occurs in large numbers in the area of ​​today 's Najran province and Yemen. This coincides with archaeological finds in Yemen and with the current geographical distribution of the Arabic lyre.

Sudan

Tanbūra or rababa as used in the zār cult. Origin Massaua , Eritrea. Collection Horniman Museum , London

The traditionally strict gender segregation, particularly prevalent in the north of Sudan, combined with numerous prohibitions to act, is held responsible for many psychological problems in women, who find freedom to develop and a kind of group therapeutic help in the zār sessions. Contrary to expectations, with the introduction of Sharia law in Sudan in 1983, the number of zār sessions increased because they were used even more as an escape from the narrow society. Since the official ban in 1992, zār meetings have been held in secret.

The word zār today essentially describes two cult practices (and the spirits occurring in them) that contain elements of popular Islam, but differ according to their origin and execution. At zār bori , only adult women meet, to which there are sometimes also effeminate men who dance repeatedly to percussive music. Some dancers reach a state of ecstasy . The passively behaving leader of the event finds through questioning the correct zār spirit that has taken possession of the patient and then measures the appropriate sacrifice, the behaviors to be observed by the assembled women and the melodies to be played with which the spirit is appeased should. The possessive mind is blamed for a number of mental and physical illnesses, including infertility, fatigue, paralysis, headache, loss of appetite, or nightmares.

While zār bori is considered to be the younger cult, which is practiced today in Sudan by women from the upper, urban middle class in addition to the originally poor women from the lower classes, tambūra ( tumbūra ) is the simpler and older form of the cult. In the tambūra , the shaikha recognizes the mind through dream interpretation. It is named after the lyre tambūra , which is usually played by a male musician . Zār bori participants who are of Arab origin or who claim this as their own clearly distinguish their cult from the disparagingly valued tambūra cult. Its participants belong to the oppressed lower class of former black African slaves (Arabic ʿabīd ), dark-skinned Nuba from the mountain region of the same name in the south or from ethnic groups from Darfur in the west, at least according to the widespread view. In addition, zār bori also has a purely entertaining component that is missing from the much more serious and strenuous tambūra . The participants in the tambūra therefore consider their cult to be the only suitable means of curing all diseases caused by zār spirits.

The lyre of the same name played at the tambūra has six strings, even if a five-string lyre is used for light music in the respective area. The lyre is the only melody instrument in the rituals; The rhythmic accompaniment is provided by drums and a rattle belt that the dancers wear on their hips. Once the possessive spirit is recognized, it is appeased by songs in a melody-rhythm combination intended only for it. According to the understanding, the spirit demands that “its” music be played. The ritual is not about driving the mind away completely. The lyre only serves as a mediator between the world of men and the spirit. It is an indispensable tool and it is through its play that the mind speaks. His language can only be understood by the tanbūra player who translates the message for those present. In the zār cult, the two sound holes in the skin are "eyes" through which the spirit looks at people.

For tambūra events in Omdurman , as they were carried out and described in the middle of the 20th century, the following applies: If a string of the lyre breaks, this is interpreted as a reaction of the spirit, which is annoyed at an inadequate treatment or a wrong one Expresses the composition of the group of participants. In this case, the ritual is ineffective and must be performed again after nine days. Part of the ritual of Omdurman was that the lyre was carried in procession to the Nile, because there is the home of all zār spirits. Animals (sheep) sacrificed during the ceremony were washed in the Nile; the lyre was smeared with her blood, and pieces of meat were given her as a food offering. Accordingly, the lyre was always supplied with the same drinks and food that those involved in the event received. These are regarded as "children of the tambūra " and demonstrate their lifelong bond with the zār by paying homage to the lyre . The jewelry attached to the yokes are also an expression of admiration for the lyre, which is addressed as an individual with its own name.

In the culture of Berta in the province of an-Nil al-azraq , who speak a Nilo-Saharan language and were often subjected to slave hunts in the 19th century, an Arab influence is noticeable today through Islamization. An obsession ceremony of Berta is similar to the zār cult and, like the six-stringed lyre played here, is named with the Arabic name tambūra . The kettle drums of different sizes ( noggaara, tabla and tambura ) also bear Arabic names . In a ceremony observed in 1982, the lyre was played by a man. Otherwise only women were involved, one group of whom accompanied the obsession dances of the other group with singing. The music was dominated by the loud, rhythmically determined play of the drums, of which the smallest execution and rattling provided a basic beat that was supplemented with the other drums to a cross rhythm . During the nightly ritual, the women, who danced ever faster and wilder, got into a state of obsession and fell to the ground, only to jump up suddenly and continue dancing until they were exhausted. When singing, solo and choir phases alternated. The lyre could only be heard in a few places.

Egypt

Mangur rattle belt , set with pieces of goat horn

Wherever the lyre is involved in the cult of zār , it is at the center of the action. The regulatory environment of a male-dominated society in Egypt is also an occasion for women to create a space for themselves in the zār cult. The cult is mentioned in several Egyptian books that appeared in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first sound document with music a ZAR -Veranstaltung comes Mustafa Said, according to which in Beirut since 2010 the music library Arab Music Archiving and Research conducts (AMAR) In 1932 by King from 1912. I. Fu'ad convened "Conference on Arabic music ”( Muʾtamar al-mūsiqā al-ʿarabiyya ) music for zār was also performed, some of which have been recorded. Towards the end of the 20th century, the once neutral attitude towards zār turned into general disdain and rejection due to criticism from both the rather secular rule of President Husni Mubarak and the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood . As in Sudan, zār continues to be cultivated in private spaces in remote rural areas as a ritual and among the educated upper classes of the cities in an adapted form as cultural tradition and entertainment. If the leader ( kūdyat ) of the ceremony comes from Lower Egypt , regional folk songs are part of the music program, a kūdyat from Upper Egypt can bring influences from Nubian music to the zār performances in Cairo . The usual musical instruments are the six-string tambūra (alternatively the five-string lyre simsimiyya ), a leather belt called mangur ( manjur ), 30 to 40 centimeters wide, on which horn pieces of goat hooves are sewn, with which the dancers make a rattle, and also drums , including the frame drum daff , the larger frame drum mazhar with snarling strings, the double-headed drum table standing on the floor or the goblet drum tabla . Open length flutes of the shabbāba type are used as melody instruments , the longer ones are called nāy and the shorter sibs . The women shake the mangur with rhythmic hip movements. The movements and belts have a clearly sexual symbolism in connection with the mythological meaning of the goat, which is widespread in the Orient .

In the course of an Egyptian possession ceremony, several music groups play their own repertoire one after the other. Two types of ensemble are usually exclusively made up of women who play a repertoire in the Nile Delta from their presumed region of origin, Upper Egypt, the third type of ensemble consists of men and played Islamic saints' songs in the Nile Delta until the 1940s. After that, this ensemble began to play songs for zār . The lyre tanbūra is only used by the fourth ensemble, whose songs belong to the Sudanese-Nubian tradition. The memberships of all zār ensembles are usually inherited within the family.

In 2000, the long-time Egyptian cultural attaché in Paris, Ahmed El Maghraby , founded the Makan Music Theater in Cairo with the aim of preserving the musical tradition of his country. The Mazaher group performs regularly here (the name is the plural form of mazhar , the frame drum). The Mazaher group has members from all zār musical traditions. Regularly at 9 p.m. the group begins to perform the different zār music forms as a concert in front of an audience that has paid admission . The leader ( raʾīsa ) of the event is a woman from Nubia who plays the frame drum mazhar herself . As in Sudan, all songs are sung in constant alternation by a solo voice and a choir. The individual pieces increase in tempo and dynamism until they abruptly break off at the climax. Two men from Sudan sing and play tanbūra in the second half of the concert . They are rhythmically accompanied by rattles and frame drums. In the course of this performance, the originally functional connection between the music and an obsession ritual can be felt, but it is not staged. This is done on the part of the organizers for practical and political reasons, in order not to attract the displeasure of opponents of the cult. A popular Egyptian band that plays tanbūra and simsimiyya is El Tanbura .

Other countries on the Red Sea

In Djibouti , the lyre is respected by the participants taking off their shoes during zār in the presence of the instrument. To honor her, the lyre in Djibouti is particularly lavishly hung with ribbons, feathers, bells, golden balls and mirrors that have a magical meaning. Zār, saar in Djibouti and Somalia , is called saar xabashi ("Ethiopian zār ") in Djibouti to indicate its origin .

The zār cult is particularly pronounced in the mostly Christian Ethiopia . The traditional center of the cult is the city of Gonder , which belongs to the Amharen settlement area in the highlands. However, the Amharic lyres krar and beganna are not used in the ritual music of the zār .

In Yemen , the zār cult is particularly widespread in the coastal lowlands ( Tihama ). In the local city of Zabid , the tanbūra is considered an instrument of the blacksmiths ( qayn ). In southern Yemen, the six-string lyre played to accompany a song is known as simsimiyya . The zār cult was introduced to the Tihama and Aden in southern Yemen by black African immigrants from the opposite African coast.

In Saudi Arabia , where lyres are called tambūra or simsimiyya , the dancers at zār can be accompanied by the popular song genre samiri ( samri ). By stamping their feet, they produce a rhythm with their goat hoof belts ( mangur ). The other rhythm instruments with which samiri songs are accompanied are the frame drum tar and the double-headed cylinder drum tabl .

Music in the Persian Gulf

Tsar cult

Conical drum called tambura in Oman. The fur stretched with stakes indicates the African origin. A similar kettle drum is called musundu. Bait Al Baranda Museum , Muscat.
African drums with tension pegs. Drum and animal horn ensemble from Abetifi, Ghana . Photo from 1889.

The zār cult is widespread on both sides of the Persian Gulf and extends to the coast of the Pakistani province of Balochistan . After the Middle Ages, the exchange of goods between the African east coast, especially Zanzibar , via Oman and the Persian Gulf to the west coast of India increased. Black African slaves and traders brought their musical culture, dances and rituals with them. Their descendants now form the Siddis group in Balochistan and in some areas of India . In Balochistan some healing rituals are practiced, which represent a connection between African cults and the predominant Sufi currents of Islam. In addition to the zār cult, this also includes the guat cult, whose accompanying ensemble plays the plucked damburag and the string suroz instead of the lyre .

Guat means "wind" or "spirit" and means an invisible spirit that causes physical and mental illnesses in women and children. Zār is also understood as such a wind spirit in the region and describes the associated healing ritual. In this context belongs the possession ceremony an-nūbān (also noban ) with relatively benign spirits, which is another variant of the African zār cult. The damaging wind spirit must be identified with its personality and its country of origin in the healing ritual. The patient possessed by the spirit communicates things to the male ( baba zār ) or female healer ( mama zār ) with gestures and in a language incomprehensible to outsiders that lead to his characterization and thus to the treatment of the patient. The musical instruments used on the south coast of Iran, Iraq, Oman and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf are African drums and the tanbūra . In Oman, the six-string lyre is called tanbūra or nūbān. Their playing style corresponds to the Sudanese tradition. Here as there it is at the center of the cult and is touched by the participants at the yoke as a gesture of greeting and adoration. The musicians accompanying the nūbān ritual of Oman play four conical African drums in a recording from 1991 in the city of Sur and beat the beat with a tin canister ( tanak ). The dancers wear Mangur -Rasselgürtel that are hung here with metal bells and sheep hooves. The tanbūra is only important for the ritual, but not musically, because it can hardly be heard in conjunction with the percussion instruments and male and female voices. In general, four or five flat cylinder drums or kettle drums and goat's hoof belt ( mangur ) are used for nūbān music in the Persian Gulf . The tanbūra player is also the lead singer who sings alternately with the choir of the other participants.

In the south of Iran, the African community of Ahl-i-hawa ("people of the wind", from Persian-Arabic ahl, "people" and hawāʾ, "wind") practices the nūbān ceremony. The Ahl-i-hawa have no explanation or mythological justification for their worship of the wind, they only speak of an African tradition. Most of the winds are believed to come from Africa, the Arabian desert or India; only a few have their origin in Iran. Colorfully dressed dancers also perform during their multi-day ceremony. Those involved speak Persian with sprinkles in Arabic and Swahili . They play the double-headed large cylinder drum dammām , which is otherwise used in Shiite passion plays , the medium-sized drum gap dohol and the small kesar . In addition to the tanbūra, bagpipes ( nay jofti and nay anban ) are used as melody instruments in the ceremonies. The zār cult is marginalized by the Islamic conservative government of Iran, but is not prohibited. However, women are not allowed to perform in front of a mixed audience. In Basra in Iraq , the lyre player is called sanjah , which actually means "harp player" (player of the harp chang ).

Light music

Music is a strengthening element not only for the minorities in the Persian Gulf from Africa. In this area the anhemitonic pentatonic music of the tanbūra is a specialty. The tanbūra music belongs to the "immigrant arts" ( al-funūn al-wāfida ) in the Gulf region . A distinction is also made according to their origin: music from the (inland) country (music of the Bedouins ), music of the sea (of the coastal fishermen) and urban (classical Arabic) music.

A style of light music originating from East Africa, which is cultivated in the African residential areas of the large cities ( e.g. in Basra and Manama ), is leiwah ( lewah ). The leiwah dance ensemble accompanies the choir of dancers with four to five different drums ( mshindo, msondo ) of African origin and the melodic bowling oboe zamr ( mizmar ) or surnāy . Drums and the tin canister tenek as the clock of the leiwah used for entertainment at weddings correspond to the music in the nūbān ceremony. Occasional trance symptoms can also occur during the leiwah performance. These point to the origin of the leiwah as an possession ceremony that was introduced with slaves from the Swahili coast at the end of the 19th century . The structural similarities between the leihwah -Zeremonialtanz and the invocation of the ghost kipemba (spirits of the island Pemba ) within the East African obsession cult pepo include the use of a Kegeloboe and a metal Idiophons - where the oboe nzumari , the sheet metal plates or metal canister upatu and the respective drums .

The tanbūra and the mangur rattle belt are part of a widespread dance tradition in the Arab states on the Persian Gulf and in the Hejaz in western Saudi Arabia. The dance genre known as fann at-tanbūra has developed from the zār cult into a form of entertainment. In Bahrain and Qatar , both instruments are supplemented by several cylinder drums , which refer to their origin with the name tabl nūbia ("Nubian drum"). Tanbūra popular music can be played at social events such as Islamic holidays. Three styles of tanbūra music are distinguished by name according to their rhythmic forms, all three originally belong to the zār cult. Today they are part of the commercial music of khaliji , which was once better known but was only played in African communities after the middle of the 20th century. In Kuwait, the singer Fatuma was successful with a tanbūra song in the 1980s . This brought the group Ma'youf to the tanbūra- singing songs tradition. Ma'youf is one of the few ensembles that play tanbūra music in concerts in Kuwait .

Discography

  • Sabet Osman, Qassas Qilabo Miri, Muhammad Gubara, Awad Abdallah Mirghani, kisir, accompanied by percussion instruments: Sudan. Osman, Gubara & Co. In the Kingdom of the Lyre. Double CD, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris 2001, Christian Poché: text booklet

literature

  • Tanja Granzow: Zār rituals in Cairo. Between tradition and medializations . (Master's thesis) Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, 2008
  • Neil van der Linden: Zār . In: Richard C. Jankowsky (Ed.): Bloomsberg Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. Vol. 10: Genres: Middle East and North Africa. Bloomsberg, New York 2015, p. 138
  • Gwendolen A. Plumley: El Tanbur. The Sudanese Lyre or The Nubian Kissar. Town and Gown Press, Cambridge 1976
  • Christian Poché: Tanbūra. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 4, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, pp. 707f
  • Artur Simon : Sudan. In: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . 24, London 2001, pp. 653-659
  • Ulrich Wegner: African string instruments. (New episode 41. Department of Music Ethnology V.) Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin 1984, pp. 93–113

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilhelm Stauder: The music of the Sumer, Babylonier and Assyrer. 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. 178f
  2. ↑ Joachim Braun: Biblical musical instruments. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Part Volume 1, Bärenreiter, Kassel and Metzler, Stuttgart 1994, Sp. 1517
  3. ↑ Ulrich Wegner, 1984, p. 99f
  4. ↑ J.-C. Chabrier: Ṭunbūr. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Volume 10, Brill, Leiden 2000, p. 625
  5. ^ Francis W. Galpin: The Music of the Sumerians and their Immediate Successors, the Babylonians and Assyrians. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1937, p. 35
  6. ↑ Cf. Michael Knüppel: Once again on the possible origin of osm. tambur (a) ~ dambur (a) ~ damur (a) etc. In: Marek Stachowski (Ed.): Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia. Vol. 14. Krakau 2003, pp. 221-223
  7. ↑ Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva: Musical Instruments of India. Their History and Development. KLM Private Limited, Calcutta 1978, p. 155
  8. ^ Jean Louis Burckhardt : Travels in Nubia. London 1819, p. 146 ( at Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ Christian Poché, 2014, p. 707
  10. ↑ Christian Poché: Supplement to the CD: Sudan. Osman, Gubara & Co. In the Kingdom of the Lyre, 2001, p. 1
  11. ↑ George Alexander Hoskins : Travels in Ethiopia, above the second cataract of the Nile; exhibiting the state of that country, and its various inhabitants, under the dominion of Mohammed Ali; and illustrates the antiquities, arts, and history of the ancient kingdom of Meroe. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green & Longman, London 1835
  12. ^ Arabic terms according to Ulrich Wegner, 2004, p. 95; Nubian names after: Artur Simon : Music of the Nubians. Double CD. Museum Collection Berlin 22/23. Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin 1998, supplement p. 14f
  13. ^ Music, celebration and healing. The Sudanese lyre. The British Museum, 2015
  14. ↑ Lisa Urkevich: Music and Traditions of the Arabian Peninsula: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. Routledge, London 2014, pp. 143f
  15. ↑ Artur Simon: Musik der Nubier, 1998, supplement p. 16f
  16. ↑ Ulrich Wegner, 1984, p. 107
  17. ↑ The alternating singing of cantor and choir is also the most common form of collective singing in Egypt. See: Artur Simon: Studies on Egyptian Folk Music. Part 1. Verlag der Musikalienhandlung Karl Dieter Wagner, Hamburg 1972, p. 25
  18. ↑ Bassankob / basamkub. Europeana Collection (photo of a Hadendoa lyre)
  19. ^ Artur Simon: Sudan, §1: Music of the Muslim peoples. (ii) Music of the Nubians. In: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2001
  20. ^ Wendy James: Reforming the Circle: Fragments of the Social History of a Vernacular African Dance Form. In: Journal of African Cultural Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1, June 2000, pp. 140–152, here p. 145
  21. ^ Artur Simon: Sudan, §1: Islamic song and music (v) Blue Nile: Ingassana, Gumuz and Berta. In: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2001, p. 656
  22. ↑ Christian Poché: Supplement to the CD: Sudan. Osman, Gubara & Co. In the Kingdom of the Lyre, 2001, p. 3
  23. ↑ Mohamed Gubara - Nora. Youtube video
  24. ↑ A. Rouaud: ZAR. In: Encyclopaedia of Islam . New Edition, Vol. 11, 2002, p. 455b
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  30. ^ Artur Simon: Music in African Rites of Possession. In: Artur Simon (Ed.): Music in Africa. With 20 articles on the knowledge of traditional African musical cultures. Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin, 1983, pp. 284–296, here p. 291
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  32. ↑ Ahmad Al Safi: The zar and the tumbura cults.
  33. ^ GP Makris: Changing Masters. Spirit Possession and Identity Construction among Slave Descendants and Other Subordinates in the Sudan. Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2000, pp. 56-58
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  36. ↑ AMAR Leading Team. amar-foundation.org
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  38. ^ Paul Collaer, Jürgen Elsner: Music history in pictures . Volume 1: Ethnic Music. Delivery 8: North Africa. Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1983, p. 34
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  47. ↑ See Will. C. van den Hoonard: East Africa. In: Encyclopædia Iranica
  48. ↑ See Helene Basu: Music and the Formation of Sidi Identity in Western India . In: History Workshop Journal, No. 65, Spring 2008, pp. 161–178
  49. ^ Jean During: African Winds and Muslim Djinns. Trance, Healing, and Devotion in Baluchistan. In: Yearbook for Traditional Music, Vol. 29, 1997, pp. 39-56, here pp. 40f
  50. ↑ See Ahmad Sikainga: Enslaved People from the Horn of Africa in the Persian Gulf in Eastern Arabia and the Gulf: The Red Sea Connection . ( Memento from December 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (Draft) pp. 1–22, here p. 16
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  53. ↑ Iraj Bashiri: Musilims or Shamans: Blacks of the Persian Gulf. 1983, pp. 1–16, here p. 4
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  55. ↑ Lisa Urkevich: Music and Traditions of the Arabian Peninsula: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. Routledge, London 2014, pp. 142f, 95
  56. ↑ Dieter Christensen: Supplement , Title 5 of the CD: Oman, 1993
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  58. ↑ Lisa Urkevich: Music and Traditions of the Arabian Peninsula: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. Routledge, London 2014, pp. 142f, 145