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 dengbźj
(bards) who disseminate and popularise it in the course of their
travels from village to village, from encampment to encampment.
A dengbźj is a peasant endowed with an exceptional memory, possessing
a voice of fine quality or possibly mastering a musical instrument.
The dengbźj 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 dūdūk, have a special
capacity for creating echo effects, in the instruments of the plains
stringed instruments predominate and especially the tenbūr, 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.
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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 Maqām Kurdī
Hicazkār (equivalent of the Greek Dorian mode), is often accompanied by
the tenbūr and sometimes-a relatively recent innovation-by both the
tenbūr and the dūdūk (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 dengbźj,, 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-ū-zirne,
blūr or dūdūk-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 berdolavī 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 (kulamźn 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 blūr-dembilk, the def-ū-zirne or the
tenbūr-dembilk or, more simply, by handicapping or by the tenbūr.
Kurdish dances are usually mixed. According to the dance (dīlan), 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 (Botanī, Derikī, Amūdī,
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 sźgavī or sźpźvi (3 steps), the carpźvī
(4 steps), the giranī (slow round), the xirfanī (langorous round), the
tesyok also called milane, in which the partners dance shoulder to
shoulder.
The dance copī, 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 (dīlana
sūr ū 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 cirīt,,
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 bźlūtź, 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: bźriyo (the milk maid),
tenzere,, sźxanī cacanź, siltanź, ēepik, 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 Ehmedź Xanī, of the 17th century, author of the Mem ū Zīn,
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 tenbūr.
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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 dengbźj sang,
"causing people to melt and weep with emotion", the
"sublime and captivating melodies" of the tembūrvan (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
maquāms. 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 blūr 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 blūr 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 blūr 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 blūr 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 dūdūk, which is also called the fīq, 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 dūdūk 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 dūdūk is practically never played alone. Even in a solo part, it
may be accompanied by a second dūdūk, which plays the tonic (drone) or
by the tenbūr.
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 tenbūr or Kurdish lute is the most popular instrument of this
category. It exists in a variety of models and dimensions.
The most common tenbūr 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 tenbūr 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. |
