موقع الجمعية اللبنانية الكردية للخدمات الاجتماعية

The Kurdish Music

In the cultural life of the Kurds, split up as they were in ancient times by feudal barriers, today by State frontiers, music came to play the role of a privileged, let us say unique medium: it filled a precise and basic social function. From historical chronicles to lyric poetry and from epics to literary works, all are sung, everything is put to music in order to be better or more easily memorised and thus handed down to posterity.

Kurdish music is, then, principally folk music and "anonymous". The circumstances of its origins and development are, in fact, very diverse and difficult to establish with accuracy. originally purely vocal, a song was often composed by a woman wishing to express her feelings of sadness or, more rarely, of joy. It might also break forth in the course of the poetic contests the young men and women indulged in on their return along mountain paths or at other gatherings of young people: nocturnal meetings in the village square, New Year's celebrations, marriage ceremonies which might last from three days to three weeks. or, then again, a song might be created from the blow of tragic events.

once the song is created, an instrumental accompaniment is added and it achieves anonymity through the intermediary of the dengbêj (bards) who disseminate and popularise it in the course of their travels from village to village, from encampment to encampment.

A dengbêj is a peasant endowed with an exceptional memory, possessing a voice of fine quality or possibly mastering a musical instrument. The dengbêj is not content merely to make known from one end of the Kurd territory to the other the local creations of others, thus acting as an effective agent in the development of a Kurdish national culture: he is also, himself, a creator, poet, composer. on the other hand, there are the mitrib (entertainers) or cengene, semi-professional musicians of "Bohemian" origin, specialised in playing the def (bass drum) and the zirne (oboe), who enliven the local festivals as well as wedding parties, and who are often simply performers on the instruments.

Transmitted orally from generation to generation, the song, as a general rule, retains quite faithfully its original words. But the melody is only a very supple frame, subject to constant modifications and to continuous renewal a renewal which helps to perfect the music and provides a guarantee of its perennial quality. The interpreter is rarely a simple performer; he puts great effort into his task, showing the nature and richness of his adaptation, recreating each work in his repertoire, accompanying them with instruments which were not used in previous interpretations.

The role of instruments is relatively secondary. As in the case of the other folk musics of the Near East, that of Kurdistan is monodic; the melody itself has a fundamentally vocal character; the instrumental accompaniment is intended above all to put the listener in a certain mood to make him more receptive to the vocal message. Furthermore, hearing the same song sung differently, with the accompaniment varying from one region of Kurdistan to another, one would be inclined to believe in the priority given to the words over the melody�the latter serving above all as an aid to the memorisation of the words. This is true, but only partially so.

The nomadic way of life had a profound effect on cultural life and especially on music. The songs of the nomad shepherds, the melodies sung in olden times on the occasion of festivities marking the departure for the Zozan (high mountains) or the return to the plains, or in the course of celebrations over the birth of lambs or the shearing of the wool, all of these still have an important place today in the repertoire of Kurdish music.

on the southern plains of Kurdistan, watered by the Tigris, the Euphrates and their tributaries, a civilisation of farmers developed. The demarcation between the mountain culture (of nomad origin) and the sedentary culture of the plains is rather clear in the field of music. While the music of the mountain people makes use particularly of wind instruments, some of which, such as the dûdûk, have a special capacity for creating echo effects, in the instruments of the plains stringed instruments predominate and especially the tenbûr, a six-stringed lute.

However, whether from the plains or the mountains, the valleys or the plateaus, the Kurdish songs have a number of traits in common: the "long" songs, dramatic and nostalgic, with the exception of the dilok, dance tunes and music for entertainment, which are numerous and spirited.

The traditional Kurdish song has a repetitive structure whose unity is provided by a strophe; this generally consists of from three to seven musical phrases. A strophe contains in itself the whole melodic line, and from one strophe to the next only the words change. The phrases do not necessarily have the same length since the lyric, which is free, only occasionally contains an identical number of syllables. Furthermore, if a song is "long", it continues in the same mood from beginning to end: gay or animated passages of another mood or, stimulating rhythm do not enter the picture or intrude on the single ambience of the song.

This structural scheme is the same for religious songs as well as for the dilok.

Musical Genres

Given the very important role of war in the life of the Kurds, epic songs are very numerous. The differentiation between the mountain and plains music can already be noted in the names given to these songs: they are called delal (beautiful) by the people of the plains and lawike siwaran (songs of cavaliers) by the mountain people. The delal, whose traditional melodic line provided the art music of the Near East with the Maqâm Kurdî Hicazkâr (equivalent of the Greek Dorian mode), is often accompanied by the tenbûr and sometimes-a relatively recent innovation-by both the tenbûr and the dûdûk (Side A, No. 8). The songs of the cavaliers have a much less regular melodic line and have more staccato and lively rhythms than those of the delal, faithfully following the story of the epic and evoking in its dramatic moments the violence of the scenes of combat.

Improvised either by dengbêj,, themselves warriors, or by women desirous of immortalising the great deeds of the event in question for the edification of future generations, these epic and war songs constitute veritable historic chronicles, in which almost all the events of local and national life are recounted.

It is through these songs that Kurdish children learn the history of their people at least that of the last two centuries. Most of them glorify those who fought courageously for freedom. Apart from these, there are also songs which tell of domestic quarrels over the possession of the best pasture lands or over the sharing of irrigation waters or which deal with the defense of family or tribal honour.

Quite apart from their informative interest concerning events of the past, these songs have the value for us of clarifying "doubtless more than those of any other genres" the mentalities, mores, values and archtypes of the different strata of Kurdish society of yesterday and today through the moral which lies permanently within the story.

The hero is the one (he or she) who knows how to make himself respected, who fights valiantly and never flees from the battlefield. An exceptional warrior-he should alone or aided by only a handful of companions, put to flight whole regiments of the enemy army-the hero is also virtuous, magnanimous towards the weak and the conquered, capable of bearing pain and anxious to conform scrupulously to a certain code of honour.

Between Jazireh and Mahabad, there exists a music which one can descril~e as funeral.

Its use remains limited; its sad melodies, played on the def-û-zirne, blûr or dûdûk-uerluane, are reserved exclusively for the funeral ceremonies of young girls and young men who have died unmarried. Some lawij, long poems sometimes of religious inspiration, are sung on such an occasion. But these lawij, filled with nostalgia and melancholy, are also sung under other circumstances as, for example, in the course of intimate evenings among close friends.

The berdolavî or' "songs of the spinning wheel", which the young girls and women hum along while spinning their yarn or weaving their rugs, are also filled with sadness and melancholy. Songs of love, intimate and unhappy, they are usually short and are sung without any sort of instrumental accompaniment. Love songs (kulamên dilan) composed mostly by women, are generally short and have a simple and totally free structure. The lyrical elan is not submitted to any constraint imposed by harmony, meter or even rhyme.

The Kurdish song evokes unhappy love frustrated by the myriad constraints imposed hy a patriarchal society. The quantity and rigidity of these constraints may also explain to some extent the enormous number of love songs in existence (in the USSR, where several Kurd colonies live, Soviet musicologists have been able to collect over a thousand).

It happens frequently that a love song was originally a simple, improvised dialogue, sung during a furtive meeting between a young man and a girl. A simple exchange of glances, a smile barely perceptible on the face of the young girl encountered at the spring, on a mountain path or on a country road, and it is the beginning of a long period of trial"composed of suffering, sacrifices and devotion" reflected in these touching songs, pressing and nostalgic appeals sent over mountains and valleys to the loved one.

The dilok or songs for dancing and entertainment, which are sung in the course of evening parties among friends or during various festivities (weddings, New Yearts, births, circumcisions, etc.) are accompanied, depending on the regions, by the blûr-dembilk, the def-û-zirne or the tenbûr-dembilk or, more simply, by handicapping or by the tenbûr.

Kurdish dances are usually mixed. According to the dance (dîlan), the men and women partners hold each other by the little finger or by the hand or still again they may place their hand on the shoulder of their male or female neighbour. The rhythm in the dilok, which is first sung by the leader and then repeated afterwards by the others, is given extra accent by the percussion (def, demloilk). All parts of the body, in principle, take part in the dance: actually, only the feet and the chest perform precise and rhythmical movements.

There is great variety in Kurdish dances, some of which are designated by the name of the region from which they come (Botanî, Derikî, Amûdî, etc.), while others may be called by the form of movements to be danced. The most widespread dance is govend, a round in which men and women, arms interlaced, perform quite complicated short steps, with very rhythmical balancing and changin of partners. There are dozens of variants, which include the sêgavî or sêpêvi (3 steps), the carpêvî (4 steps), the giranî (slow round), the xirfanî (langorous round), the tesyok also called milane, in which the partners dance shoulder to shoulder.

The dance copî, equally very widespread, includes hopping. The farandole of dancers advances and retreats, oscillating from one side to the other.

Among the rare non-mixed dances, we should mention the saber dance (dîlana sûr û mertal which is a series of exercises in agility and adroitness. This masculine dance, formerly danced frequently and much liked, is tending to disappear in our time. The same is true of the cirît,, another warrior dance which is actually the simulation of combat on horseback and plays an important part in wedding festivities.

The feqeh (theological students), who constitute a stratum of society which considers itself a shade superior to the "pagan" mass of the people, have a special dance called bêlûtê, whose origin was probably of religious inspiration.

Finally, we should not fail mention a few of the most frequently performed folk dances today in Kurdistan: bêriyo (the milk maid), tenzere,, sêxanî cacanê, siltanê, çepik, etc.

The modern repertoire of the political chanson makes use of the poems of classic authors such as Feqehe Teyran, revolutionary poet of the 14th century, and Ehmedê Xanî, of the 17th century, author of the Mem û Zîn, national Kurdish epic, as well as works by contemporary poets (Cegerxw1n, Hejar, Bekes, etc.). The political chanson, which is in fact non-anonymous sung poetry, is accompanied by the tenbûr.

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Art Music

At the present time there is really no Kurdish music that one might qualify as art music. Nevertheless, if we can believe the stories and reports of historians and travellers of the Middle Ages, there doubtless existed a "developed and refined" music in the feudal Kurdish courts.

What sort of music went into these songs which the dengbêj sang, "causing people to melt and weep with emotion", the "sublime and captivating melodies" of the tembûrvan (players of the Kurdish lute), "receiving their art and their secrets straight from heaven"? What was this court music like? Was it modal and, if so, what were its relationships with the art music in favour in the court of the caliph? All of these questions remain unanswered.

Whatever the case may be, the very important contributions of Kurdish musicians to the development of Musulman art music allows us to surmise that music life was very advanced in Kurdistan of the period.

Ibrahim al-Mehdi (743 - 806), under the reign of Caliph Haroun al-Rachid, reached the pinnacle of glory. Precious companion (nadzm) of the Caliph, he was called "paradise on earth"; Ibrahim Mawsili, who founded a conservatory "probaluly the first in the Near East" intended chiefly for the training of the slave-singers (qayna) is considered by music historians to have been "father of classical Mussulman music".

His son, Ishaq, also highly honoured in the Caliph's court and who is credited with having composed 4OO melodies, influenced music of the Baghdad school and gave it its definitive form and style, which later have varied only superficially. The al-Mawsili musicians of Mossul were the artisans of the golden age of the Abbassidean period. Later on, Hammad, son of Ishaq, though with less genius, continued the work of his illustrious predecessors.

Another talented Kurdish musician, Ziryab (789 - 857), a freed slave from a humble village of Mossul, carried on the traditions of the al-Mawsilis. After having begon his career under Ishaq in Baghdad, he pursued it with exceptional brilliance in the court of ABder Rahman in Cordova, where he founded a conservatory; this became a nursery of Arab-Andalusian art, whose traditions vvere to he perpetuated later throughout the MaghreL. It was Ziryalo who invented the plectrum (pick) and who added a fifth string to the lute of his master Ishaq al-Mawsili.

A universal man vvhose culture was as varied as it was vast, Ziryab "synthesized Iranian and Greek sources, gave music a psychic and therapeutic role, which he related to the signs of the Zodiac, to the elements of nature, to temperaments which corresponded to the different maquâms. From this the tonal, modal and orchestral system of the 24 Namba was born." (Simon Jargy, La Musique arabe. P.U.F.: Paris.)

Later, the most ambitious of the Kurdish musicians sought their fame and glory in the court of the Sultans of Istanbul. The tradition thus established has continued up to the present time when, for example, the greatest names of Turkish music "to refer only to that music" are actually Kurds (Ruhi Su, Nesimi, Rahmi Saltuk, Ihsani, Daimi, etc.). Kurds for whom the only way to touch a broad public and to achieve glory was to express themselves in the official State language.

Religious music "the Zikrs of the fraternities and mystical songs (beyt)" also plays an important role in the music life of the Kurds.

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Instruments

From an instrumental point of view, Kurdish music is characterized by the preponderance of wind instruments, the total absence of bowed instruments "found so frequently in Turk-Mongolian folk musics" as well as of struck string instruments and of the transverse flute, another instrument widely played in the orient

The blûr or shepherd's flute, which is the basic instrument used in folk music. A sound pipe carved from a branche of either mulberry or walnut trees, the blûr has neither notches nor a reed. Made primitively and often not very carefully, it does not have standard dimensions. one can, at least, indicate a few general details of its size: it includes either 7 or g equidistant holes, except for the last hole, which is separated from the next-to-last by a larger interval. The sound opening is on the back.

The length of the blûr varies from 4O to 60 cms. and sometimes is longer. The inner radius of the pipe is about O.9 cms., its upper end which one holds at a slightly oblique angle between the lips, is in the form of a truncated cone. Actually, the player must sing into the instrument and breathing plays a primordial role.

Played often as a solo, the blûr also accompanies love songs and epic songs quite often, and it is not rare that, playing with the erbane (tambourine) it also accompanies the dances and dilok in the mountain villages; and, of course, one should not forget that it serves the shepherds as a means of communication with their flocks.

The dûdûk, which is also called the fîq, is used especially in the valleys and on the high plateaus of the northern Kurd region which is at present in Turkey. one also comes across it in the musics of certain peoples of the Caucasus (Armenians, Azerbaidjans, etc.).

The dûdûk is a pipe carved from a mulberry branch or apricot tree branch, of an average length of 32 cms., perforated with 8 equidistant holes on the upper surface and with an opening at the back, very slightly widened towurds the upper end where a reed mouthpiece of about 12 cms. is inserted. Used earlier to accompany war songs or traditional love songs, it now tends to become general practice. In addition, along with the def (bass drum), it may accompany dances.

The dûdûk is practically never played alone. Even in a solo part, it may be accompanied by a second dûdûk, which plays the tonic (drone) or by the tenbûr.

The zirne is a conical oboe with double willow rced enclosed in a small brass mouthpiece. one finds it usad in most of the folk musics of thé Near East and the Maghreb.

The tenbûr or Kurdish lute is the most popular instrument of this category. It exists in a variety of models and dimensions.

The most common tenbûr has a resonance box in the form of a half-pear (carved from mulberry tree wood), 6 metallic strings plucked with a plectrum (pick), a neck made of walnut wood about a meter long, containing 6 pegs and 32 non-equidistant and adjustable frets. Its sound board is not pierced.

The playing of the tenbûr does not in principle call for the addition of percussion. It is used alone to accompany traditional songs of the plains and especially political chansons, for which it is widely used. When it accompanies entertainment chansons and dances, it is sometimes supported by the dembilk (pottery drum), notably among the Kurds of Syria and Iraq. This manner of presentation tends to spread also into the meridional cities of Kurdistan of Turkey.

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