Tsifteteli

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Tsifteteli ( Greek τσιφτετέλι , from Turkish çifte telli , from çifte , "double", "paired" and tel , "string", also çifteli , "with double" [strings]) is a Greek folk dance of women, which with its sensual- erotic hip movements and even-numbered rhythms goes back to the Turkish folk dance of the same name çifte telli and is a variant of the oriental dance . The improvised individual dance or contact-free couple dance knows no fixed body movements or step sequences.

origin

Oriental dance takes its name from its main area of ​​distribution in the Arabic-speaking area, where it is called raqs sharqi ( raqṣ šarqī , "dance of the east") and is known colloquially simply as raqṣ ("dance"). A related Egyptian woman dance is the baladī . The main distinguishing feature from most other folk dances in the Orient are hip movements "like a snake", from which the French expression dance du ventre comes, which became "belly dance" in German. Also characteristic is a costume, the approximate current appearance of which with a skimpy top and a long translucent skirt gradually became a convention under the influence of the western entertainment industry from the end of the 19th century. The dance tradition extends from the dance girls of the Ouled Nail in the Maghreb via Egypt to the professional singing and dance groups of the motrebi in Iran of the Qajar dynasty , comparable to the nautch (erotic dance girls in the palaces of the Indian maharajas ). Movement elements of oriental dance therefore belonged to folk village dances and court festivals, always in a non-religious context. Another characteristic of the oriental dance styles in the Arab countries are the rhythms in 8/8 and 4/4 time, which are often broken up by syncope . In Turkey, a 9/8 rhythm with 2 + 2 + 2 + 3 beats is also common due to the influence of the asymmetrical aksak rhythms popular in folk dances in western Turkey and the Balkans . In the Orient, in terms of its movement patterns and cultural environment, professional dance is basically a women's dance, even if from the Ottoman Empire to southern Central Asia in taverns and palaces, instead of dancing girls (Turkish çengi ), boys in women's clothes ( köçek , Persian battscha, bačča ) also performed .

The Turkish word çifte telli comes from the musical accompaniment of a two-string Turkish long-necked lute of the saz type , which is called çiftelia in Albania . In Turkey it also denotes a 2/4 time signature in folk music. Single reed instruments (double clarinets) consisting of two connected chess tubes are called çifte . Otherwise, in Turkey, the generic term for the belly dance styles oryantal tansi and göbek ("belly") is used alongside regional names.

During the Ottoman rule, elements of Turkish and Arab culture including music spread throughout the Balkans. The high point of an entertainment culture in the Ottoman Empire, characterized by music and dance performances in the cafes and taverns of the Aegean port cities, was the time of Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909). The customers of the restaurants, which offered food, alcohol and an entertainment program, included workers, sailors and members of the upper classes. The singers and dancers came from the Greek, Armenian and Jewish minorities of non-Muslims in Istanbul . Musicians were often Roma .

In the second half of the 19th century, a style of music called smyrneika developed among the Greek population in cities in Asia Minor such as Istanbul and Izmir (in Greek: Smyrni) and in large cities on mainland Greece . The singing, which was partly performed in Turkish, was accompanied by violin, guitar, mandolin, outi (fretless kink-neck lute , corresponds to the Arabic oud ), kanonaki (oriental box zither kanun ) and sandouri ( santouri , santur ). A form of the Turkish folk song ( turku ) in 9/4 time, zeybek havası , was performed as zeibekiko in Ottoman-Greek cafes . Another oriental style of music was rembetiko , which developed after the population exchange in 1922, first in Piraeus , later also in Athens and Thessaloniki , when the Ottoman Greeks were expelled from Asia Minor. In the melancholy songs of the often 2/4 time rembetiko , the lower class of the population expressed the fate of poor life and the loss of their homeland. Despite the clear references to the Ottoman musical tradition, rembetiko is transfigured by some Greeks into a national Greek musical style. Other popular music styles that emerged from the Ottoman folk music tradition in the Balkans in the 1920s and 1930s were čalgiska muzika in Macedonia , sevdalinka in Bosnia and starogradske pesme ("old town songs ") in Serbia and Bulgaria .

performance

The tsifteteli as part of this culturally pluralistic environment in the Ottoman Empire spread in the Balkans, especially from around 1900 and after 1922. An area of ​​a restaurant was usually reserved for small music groups and dancers, who initially performed for a tip and later with a permanent commitment . The typical restaurant was called Café-Aman , probably derived from the Turkish Mani Kahvesi . The now professional musicians sat on chairs on a podium away from the audience and the dancers, in contrast to the musicians of the amateur groups, which was dwindling around this time, who walked around between the guests at family celebrations. The first recordings of Greek folk dance music in the mid-1920s contributed to the professionalization of the urban music scene. The ensembles ( koumpania ) in Piraeus and Athens around 1922 included a sandouri , a laouto (lute instrument with a short neck and frets), an outi or a saz . The singer accompanied herself rhythmically with a frame drum ( defi ), spoons ( koutalia , Turkish kaşık ) or cymbals ( zilia , Turkish zil ). The singer often performed as a belly dancer at the same time. The songs sounded drawn out and sad in accordance with the Smyrna style of rembetiko in 2/4 time. Allusions to the belly dance tradition in the harem of the Ottoman sultan and interspersed Turkish words in the songs of this time are to be understood as a nostalgic return to the origins.

According to observations made around 1960, Felix Hoerburger summarizes three dance styles without a fixed form in Macedonia under the generic term rebetikos ( rembetiko ): According to this , two men facing each other dance the tsifte telli with arms raised. At zeimpetikos , only one of the two men dances with his arms raised while the other person claps his hands. From this he distinguishes the “true rempetikos ”, in which only a man moves with his arms raised.

The urban dance style tsifteteli is danced by women and couples today. As a couple dance, it developed from the women's dance. A drum kit or frame drums and clapping of hands provide the rhythm. Traditional melodic instruments are violin, bouzouki and outi . Other dance styles in Greek folk music are the pair dance karsilamas in 9/8 time, which, like zeibekiko, comes from Asia Minor. Otherwise, even-numbered bars are common for the Greek variant of the belly dance and the other Greek dances. The typical Greek round dance is the rural syrtos , which is danced in restaurants in the evenings; a modern variant is the sirtaki . The various dances have a permanent place in national Greek historiography. At festivals and family celebrations, they are performed in a specific order that, in the imagination of ancient Greek roots, leads to liberation from Ottoman domination (1821–1829). The rural folk dances syrtos, kalamatianos (7/8 time) and tsamiko (3/4 time) are followed by the urban dances zeibekiko and tsifteteli .

In addition to its appreciation as a form of entertainment and dance sport, the perception of tsifteteli has fluctuated since the second half of the 20th century between rejection out of prudishness, because of alleged discrimination against women or rejection as inauthentic in contrast to the classical Greek dances. In contrast, there have been attempts to connect the tsifteteli with ancient cults around a mother goddess and the Greek goddess Aphrodite . This would have elevated the tsifteteli to ancient Greek culture and spread from there as a supposedly oriental dance.

A known example of the Tsifteteli composed rembetiko -Liedes is Misirlou (Turkish Mısırlı , "Egyptian / in") from 1927, which has been reinterpreted many times later, including 1,962 from the surf guitarist Dick Dale in a rock version.

literature

  • Stavros Stavrou Karayanni: Dancing Fear & Desire. Race, Sexuality, and Imperial Politics in Middle Eastern Dance (= Cultural Studies Series. ). Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo Ontario 2004, ISBN 0-88920-454-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Negareh: Qajar Musician Motreb.jpg Photo of a Motreb band, around 1900
  2. ↑ Nice Fracile: "Aksak" Rhythm, a Distinctive Feature of the Balkan Folklore. In: Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. Vol. 44, Fasc. 1/2, 2003, pp. 197-210, doi : 10.1556 / SMus.44.2003.1-2.18 .
  3. ↑ Leona Wood, Anthony Shay: Danse du Ventre: A Fresh Appraisal. In: Dance Research Journal. Vol. 8, No. 2, 1976, pp. 18-30, here pp. 18 f., 23, doi : 10.2307 / 1478151 .
  4. ↑ Laurence Picken : Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey. Oxford University Press, London 1975, ISBN 0-19-318102-9 , pp. 513-527.
  5. ^ Risto Pekka Pennanen: Nationalization of Ottoman Popular Music in Greece. In: Ethnomusicology. Vol. 48, No. 1, 2004, pp. 1-25, here pp. 2 f., 6, JSTOR 30046238 .
  6. ↑ Irene Loutzaki: Greek Folk Dance Music. In: Yearbook for Traditional Music. Vol. 26, 1994, pp. 168-179, here p. 168, doi : 10.2307 / 768264 .
  7. ↑ Jane K. Cowan: Greece. In: James Porter, Timothy Rice, Bruno Nettl , Ruth M. Stone (Eds.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 8: Timothy Rice, James Porter, Chris Goertzen (Eds.): Europe (= Garland Reference Library of the Humanities. 1169). Garland, New York NY et al. 2000, ISBN 0-8240-6034-2 , p. 1019.
  8. ^ Felix Hoerburger: Oriental Elements in the Folk Dance and Folk Dance Music of Greek Macedonia. In: Journal of the International Folk Music Council. Vol. 19, 1967, pp. 71-75, here p. 72, doi : 10.2307 / 942190 .
  9. ↑ Dimitri Monos: Rebetico: The Music of the Greek Urban Working Class. In: Arthur J. Vidich (Ed.): The Sociology of Culture (= International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. , Vol. 1, No. 2, Special Issue, ISSN  0891-4486 ). Human Sciences Press, New York NY 1987, pp. 301-309, here p. 307, doi : 10.1007 / BF01388244 .
  10. ^ Sofia Kalogeropoulou: Greek dance and everyday nationalism in contemporary Greece. In: Dance Research Aotearoa. Vol. 1, 2013, pp. 55-74, here p. 62, online .
  11. ↑ SS Karayanni: Dancing Fear & Desire. 2004, p. 144 f.