In your opinion, what is he doing?

Masters reopen Music Museum of Iran

Nasrollah Nasehpoor

Masters reopen Music Museum of Iran

Nasehpour Ensemble to perform at German festival

Nasehpour Ensemble to perform at German festival

TEHRAN — Iran’s Nasehpour Ensemble will give a concert at the Musics of the World Festival that will be held from November 8th, 2009, in Halle, Germany.

The concert, which is a Improvisational performance, was held two years ago at the festival and was warmly received by the audience.

Benefizveranstaltung

Download Flyer

am Samstag, 7. November 2009, im Teo Otto Theater

zu Gunsten der Kinderkrebsklinik in Orumieh (Nordwest Iran)

sowie dem IKE Foerderverein fuer Interkulturelle Erziehung e.V.,

Moehrchen in Remscheid, Kinder-Selbsthilfeprojekt Our children and our future in Uganda und weitere Projekte

iranische klasische Musik:

Farzin Darabi Far (Tar und Setar) und seine Schueler

Peyman Nasehpour (Tonbak)

Naomi Yoshimura am Klavier

Orientalische Tanzgruppen Patchouli und Misch Misch

Nachwuchs-Showgruppe artistic jumpers

Einlass 18.00 Uhr
Beginn 19.00 Uhr
Eintritt 15.00 Euro
Schueler / Studenten 5.00 Euro
an der Abendkasse
Info: 0162 914 80 42

New Tonbak Solo Clips by Peyman Nasehpour

Pooyan digitalized a tonbak solo of mine and we uploaded that tonbak solo on youtube/tonbak.

Persian music radif repertoire and Persian New Year make it into UN heritage list

Persian music and New Year traditions have been registered on UNESCO’s List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Tradition of Persian New Year, Nowruz, and the Radif of Iranian music were inscribed on the list during the 4th session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage held from Sep. 28 to Oct. 2, 2009 in Abu Dhabi.

Nowruz, which coincides with the first day of spring on the solar calendar, is mostly celebrated in Iran, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan.

For Iranians, Nowruz is a celebration of renewal and change, a time to visit relatives and friends, and pay respect to senior family members.

Iranians welcome the New Year by wearing new clothes and setting the Haft Seen, a table containing seven items starting with the letter ‘S’ — Sabzeh (freshly grown greens), Samanoo (A type of traditional pudding), Senjed (Jujube), Seeb (Apple), Seer (Garlic), Sumac and Serkeh (vinegar).

The Radif of Iranian music is the traditional repertoire of the classical music of Iran and reflects the cultural and national identity of the Iranian people.

UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) was established in the 1990s and deals with oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, traditional craftsmanship and knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe.

Persian Music Concert by Kayhan Kalhor and Behrouz Jamali

World famous kamancheh master, Kayhan Kalhor will perform in New York city on October 3rd, 2009, Saturday at 8:00 PM. He will be accompanied on tonbak by Behrouz Jamali.

They will play songs of hope for Iran at Peter Norton Symphony Space, Broadway at 95th St., New York.

The great master of Santoor, Parviz Meshkatian, passes away

Parviz Meshkatian, the great master of Persian santoor, passes away.

Parviz Meshkatian was born in Neishabur (northeastern Iran) in 1955. He started his musical training at the age of six with his father Hassan Meshkatian, who played tar and santur masterfully and was also familiar with the violin and setar, having himself learned music from his father.
At an early age, Meshkatian entered the Tehran Academy of Arts, where he studied music theory and was introduced to radif (the Persian classical music repertoire) by the masters Nour Ali Boroumand, Dariush Safvat, Mohammad Taghi Massoudieh, and Mehdi Barkeshli. He focused on the radif of Mirza Abdollah for santur and setar.

After finishing his academic studies, Meshkatian continued the study of music with such masters as the late Abdollah Davami, Saied Hormozi, and Yousef Forootan. He has won the first prize in santur performance at the Barbad competition. He has taught santur at the Center for the Preservation and Dissemination of Music, where he also served as ensemble leader.

In 1977, Meshkatian founded the Aref Ensemble, which has brought a number of vocalists and musicians to prominence. He has composed numerous songs and pieces of music, all of which the ensemble has recorded and performed at concerts in Europe and America.

The ensemble has accordingly been recognized for its efforts to introduce Persian music outside of Iran. In the spring of 1992, Meshkatian was chosen as the best composer at the Spirit of the Earth festival in Italy. He was also one of the founding members of the Chavosh Artistic and Cultural Foundation, which has played a major role in the development of Iranian music in recent years. Meshkatian’s settings of classical poetry to music, based on a profound knowledge of Persian literature, established a new chapter of song writing in Persian classical music.

As a leading figure and a santur virtuoso, he has introduced many new santur performance techniques and, by adding new instruments, changed the color of the sound associated with ensemble orchestration.
Parviz Meshkatian has recorded over 200 pieces of work, published 18 books and many more articles, and performed in hundreds of concerts around the world. The Maestro remains active in recording, composing, and writing, and his work will continue to enrich Persian music for many years to come.

Parviz Meshkatian Official Website

Nothing really new for Iranian music part of Morgenland Festival in 2009

Morgenland festival is one of the biggest oriental festivals in Europe and in 2009, the fifth year is going to start tomorrow, 21.08.2009. I was myself a part of Morgenland festival in 2007 and I am happy that I was a part of this festival in that year.

The problem of the Iranian music part of Morgenland festival is that the festival has invited Salar Aghili and Nader Mashayekhi for most of the years.

Salar Aghili is a good singer and he was a student of Seddigh Tarif and Sedigh Tarif was my father’s student long time ago. Nader Mashayekhi is also a good conductor. I have no personal problem with any of the two mentioned Iranian musicians, but the question is why the director doesn’t invite new musicians to show different styles of Persian music.

It seems the two musicians have a nice friendship with the director and this is really great, but I guess a good director must invite different musicians from Iran to show some other musicians to people who attend in Morgenland festival.

Anyway the official website of Morgenland Festival is:

Morgenland Festival

Shajarian and Shahnaz Ensemble to tour in Europe

Silk Road Music at http://www.silkroad-music.com

Maestro Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahnaz Ensemble will tour in Europe in September 2009, while his concerts in Iran in this summer were cancelled probably because of the unrests of Iran’s post-election. The fourteen musicians who accompany Shajarian are young, but talented and among the best musicians in Iran. The melodies and pieces have been composed by Shajarian himself and Majid Derakhshani, the famous tar and setar player who is one of the most important members of Shahnaz Ensemble.

The maestro’s tour concert will start on Sep. 4th in Frankfurt, Germany and Sep. 5th in one of the best stages of Europe, Kölner Philharmonie, in Cologne, Germany and will be continued in other cities such as Hannover, Zurich, Paris and London.

Shajarian is one of the greatest and the most active musicians of Iran who has gained many awards in music including a couple of important UNESCO awards. The name of Shahnaz is for the appreciation of maestro Jalil Shahnaz, the great master of tar, also mentioning to a famous piece of Shahnaz in Dastgah-e-Shour, the mother of Persian melody modes.

Shajarian enjoys of many interesting talents. Recently, in a very important exhibition in Tehran, he showed off his innovations in making new music instruments with new sounds and possibilities.

The other members of Shahnaz Ensemble are: Ramin Safaei (santour), Mojgan Shajarian (Setar), Sahar Ebrahim (Setar), Radman Tawakoli (Tar), Hamid Ghanbari (Percussion), Mohammad Reza Ebrahimi (Oud), Shahoo Andalibi (Ney), Hossein Rezai-Nia (Daf), Kaveh Motamedian and Sina Jahan-Abadi (Kamancheh), Mehdi Amini (Robab), Mehrdad Nasahi (Gheychak Alto) and Hamed Afshari (Gheychak Bass).

For more info about the tour concert, please refer to Farzin Darabi Far’s Silk Road Music at http://www.silkroad-music.com

Mir-Hossein Mousavi

Kaleme News

Happy Persian New Year

Happy Spring and Noruz

Balatarin, Iranian digg, has been hacked

I have noticed that Balatarin.com that is Iranian version of Digg.com has been hacked. Sometimes I was posting my cultural links there. I hope it will be back very soon.

Iranian Ladies Play Daf for Sadeh Celebration

Info about Sadeh

Festival lädt zu “Musikwelten im Alten Kurhaus”

Freitag, 30. Januar 2009

Vom 13. bis zum 15. Februar wird das internationale Festival „Musikwelten im Alten Kurhaus“ innerhalb der Reihen “konzertant” und “Klangkosmos” mit drei sehr unterschiedlichen Konzerten allen Musikfreunden ein außergewöhnliches und unvergessliches Wochenende bieten:

Zum Auftakt am Freitag, 13. Februar, 20 Uhr, wird das weltberühmte Raschèr Saxophone Quartet im Ballsaal des Alten Kurhauses erstmalig mit der kanadischen Pianistin und Komponistin Heather Schmidt gemeinsam zu hören sein.

Werke von Bach, Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Terzakis, Glass und Schmidt stehen auf dem Programm – darunter auch zwei Welturaufführungen. Das Raschèr Saxophone Quartet inspirierte und inspiriert zahlreiche Komponisten, ihm Werke zu widmen, die in den bedeutendsten Konzerthäusern der Welt mit namhaften Ensembles aufgeführt wurden/werden. Das Raschèr Saxophone Quartet feiert dieses Jahr 40jähriges Bühnenjubiläum.

Am Samstag, 14. Februar, 20 Uhr, wird in der Klangbrücke im Rahmen der Reihe Klangkosmos das Ensemble Voix Polyphoniques aus Frankreich ein Konzertprogramm mit Gesängen vom Schwarzen Meer sowie eigenen Kompositionen in der Tradition georgischer Polyphonie dreistimmig präsentieren. Das Ensemble entstand 1991 unter Leitung der Pianistin, Schauspielerin und Sängerin Brigitte Cirla in Marseille und widmet sich seitdem neben der Auseinandersetzung mit der korsischen Polyphonie auch anderen Kulturen mit polyphoner Identität.

Farzin Darabi Far & Ensemble werden am Sonntag, 15. Februar, 20 Uhr, in der Klangbrücke mit seinem neuen Programm ‚Mystery of Existence’ gastieren. Ein Abend, in dem klassische iranische Kunstmusik mit modernen Elementen verbunden wird. Darabi Far begeisterte bereits bei seinem Auftritt mit dem Rumi Ensemble anlässlich der letzten Aachener Langen Nacht der Museen. Diesmal wird er von hochkarätigen Musikern aus dem Iran begleitet, darunter zwei der Besten Perkussionisten des Iran überhaupt: Peyman Nasehpour und Kamran Yaghoobi.

Der Eintrittspreis liegt zwischen 8 und 15 Euro. Festivalpreis für alle drei Veranstaltungen: € 30,–/20,– (erm.) Vorverkauf: An allen AN/AZ-Servicestellen, Ticketshop in der Mayerschen Buchhandlung, Klenkes Ticket im Kapuziner Karree und www.aachenticket.de, Tel.: 0180 500 34 64 (Die Eintrittspreise im Vorverkauf verstehen sich zuzüglich Vorverkaufsgebühr). Weitere Infos gibt es bei Susanne Güntner vom Veranstaltungsmanagement der Stadt Aachen unter der Telefonnummer 0241/4943 oder der E-Mail-Adresse Susanne.Guentner@mail.aachen.de.

Resource

Photos of my concert in Remscheid

Ghaval solo

Tonbak solo

These two photos taken by photojournalist, Zohreh Khosravi

Shahla Khosravi Iranian Singer

Shahla Khosravi

Shahla Khosravi Iranian Singer

Naomi Yoshimura Pianist from Japan Living in Hamburg

Naomi Yoshimura

“… Her playing is convincing and of great expression.” ,(Cord Garben, sheaves, chairman von Steinway piano competition, president of internationally Johannes Brahms society)

“….a concert very much developed… her musical performances came with very high praises. Her qualification gave us caus e, a want to work to together ….(Juan Carlo Reitze de la Maza ((leader of Johannes Brahms conservatoire))

Those Hamburg music world became threw their appearances among other things with that Hamburgers “night of the museums” (cooperation in internationally Johannes Brahms society in Hamburg), in museum for people customer Hamburg, at the Johannes Brahms conservatoire Hamburg and as soon as threw the broadcast and television productions with NDR, German wave and BBC Germany on it attentively.

1995 gave Naomi Yoshimura her orchestra debut as soloist with the national chamber orchestra Krakau under the conductor Stanislav Gavonski in Poland. Further concerts than solo and chamber music pianist in Japan, the USA, France, Belgium, Czech Republic and Germ any followed.

She was born in 1979 in Japan. With six years they received their first piano instruction. Already 1995 won it the 1.Preis with the piano competition in Kyushu/Japan. After the school-leaving exam in Japan it began its piano study at the university for music and theatre in Rostock. Later she advanced her studies at the university for music and theatre in Hamburg away and there locked artistic examination with “very well” (A / 1).

In the master classes of, Bernd Goeztke, Paul Pollei, Arnulf von Arnim, Nelson depression Vigine Fabbri and Cord sheaves refined her their artistic expression. It was grant from the Rotary Club old country, Buxtehude and State.

Apart from its concert activity she teaches since 2007 at the Johannes Brahms conservatoire in Hamburg in the specialty piano and accompaniment.

Her CD with piano works of Mozart, appeared published to Chopin, Prokofieff in the autumn 2008 and evaluated “…She is able to play all styles from Mozart to prokofieff. …Her playing is convincing and great of expression.” (Cord Garben sheaves, honor times producer of German Grammophon)

Hamburg December 2008

CD of Naomi has been recently released by Ancient Music Edition.

Naomi’s page at my personal website

Neyestan Emseble to Perform in Niavaran Culture House of Tehran

Neyestan Ensemble is going to have a concert in Niavaran Culture House, Tehran, Iran on Azar, 28th and 29th, 1387. The singer is Pouria Akhavas and the conductor is Kourosh Matin (santoor player). More info in the following poster:

Gitti Khosravi’s upcoming events

Gitti Khosravi is going to perform in Kulturladen, Hamburg, Germany.

In this concert that is for Nicolaus Party, she will be accompanied by Naomi Yoshimura (piano) and Peyman Nasehpour (hand drummer).

More info about the concert:

Opera Music by Gitti Khosravi Ensemble

Also Gitti will have another concert at Italienisches Kulturinstitut Hamburg. More info here:

Festa di Natale

In this concert she will be accompanied by Raminta Lampsatis

Massoud Shaari’s setar and Peyman Nasehpour’s tonbak Video Clip

Somebody has posted a clip of Massoud Shaari’s setar accompanied by my tonbak in the Festival of Improvisation on Aug. 30th, 2001. We played this concert in the famous salon of Arasbaran Culture House (today named as Art Culture House).

Deutsche Welle’s report about maestro Gitti Khosravi’s concert in Remscheid city of Germany

Deutsche Welle sent out a nice report of Gitti Khosravi’s concert in Persian:

پشتیبانی شهر رمشاید آلمان از کودکان سرطانی ارومیه

Susanne Hahn

Gitti Khosravi to perform Samin Baghcheban’s compositions

Gitti Khosravi, outstanding Iranian opera singer living in Hamburg, will have a beneficial concert for raising fund for a hospital of Orumiyyeh, the center of West Azerbaijan province of Iran. In this concert to be held on Nov. 14th, 2008, Firuz Bahor (componist and pianist from Tajikistan living in Berlin), Naomi Yoshimura (pianist from Japan living in Hamburg), Dorothea Mader (musician from Germany living in Berlin) and Peyman Nasehpour (drummer from Iran living in Osnabrück) will accompany and help her to perform some compisitions of Eastern and Western componists, particularly, the late Samin Baghcheban, the famous Iranian componist that recently passed away in Istanbul, Turkey.

Gitti Khosravi that is working on different projects to introduce East to the West and West to the East will sing in the concert in Remscheid city of Germany in different languages including, Persian, Azeri, Italian, German and Russian.

She is now translating some works of Suzuki into Persian and will have another concert on Dec. 10th, 2008 for welcoming the new year, 2009 in Hamburg. This concert has been organized by the cultural section of the embassy of Italy in Germany.

Opera singer Khosravi feels indebted to Baghcheban (Tehran Times in English)

CNN mentions the name tonbak!

Just now I noticed that CNN had a report about Iranian-American youth with a picture of daf (frame drum) while mentioning the name tonbak:

Iranian-American youth struggle to define themselves

Iranian Labour News Agency, ILNA, to start working very soon

Iranian labour news agency (ILNA) that was stopped working will start to send out news in Persian language very soon. Aftabnews.ir reported some days ago that ILNA will start working very soon.

Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) is an Iranian news agency. It was formally launched in Tehran on February 24, 2003, and provides extensive coverage of the country’s workforce.
ILNA operates under the supervision of the Labour Higher Education Institute and belongs to the Workers’ House, a labour union set up by the Iranian government.

Persian Music Concert in Ruhr Triennale 2008

Maryam Akhondy (singer) with her ensemble Barbad will have a concert in Duisburg-Germany, as a part of an internationally known festival “Ruhr Triennale 2008″ on 29.08.08.

Accompaniments: Farzin Darabi Far (Tar), Peyman Nasehpour (Tonbak) and Vocal Choir

For more go to the following link:

Ruhr Triennale 2008

Baznegar, a wonderful Persian website

One of my favorite websites in Persian language is www.baznegar.org. It is a very nice website hosting lots of Persian blogs, including my Persian blog: www.nasehpour.blogfa.com.

Recently because of some reasons it has been banned which I am not happy of that, because many bloggers that baznegar hosts will lose some of their visitors. I hope it will be accessible for Iranians in Iran once again.

Santoor concert by Pt Tarun Bhattacharya

LOS ANGELES: SPIC-MACKAY is organizing a free santoor-concert by Pandit Tarun Bhattacharya at Moore Hall, UCLA on May 18. He will be accompanied by Abhishek Basu on tabla. Pt. Tarun Bhattacharya is an accomplished Santoor artist who is the only Santoor player of the famous Maihar school of Hindustani Music.

His father, Pandit Robi Bhattacharya was his first teacher. He then became a disciple of Pundit Dulal Roy, a well-known music teacher from Kolkata. In 1982, Tarun met Pandit Ravi Shankar and became his student. This association continues even today, and Pandit Ravi Shankar’s influence on Tarun’s music is unmistakable.

Tarun is very innovative and he has also made a number of modifications in the instrument and his style reflects those changes. For example, he can play “meends” in the lower octave, which is not possible with the traditional instrument. Tarun has given numerous solo performances in India as well as in various counties of the world.

He has very successfully collaborated with several other musicians such as Ronu Majumdar and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt. His efforts have been recognized and felicitated from all over the world and some of his prestigious recognitions are the “Best Critic Award” from Germany, “Excellence in World Music” from the US among others.

The santoor is a hammered dulcimer with a hundred strings, originally used as an accompaniment instrument to the Folk music of Kashmir (northern part of Indian sub-continent). The santoor finds a mention even in ancient Vedic literature as the ‘Shata Tantri Veena’.

Today, the santoor occupies a prominent place in Hindustani Music as an independent instrument. Several eminent artists such as Shivkumar Sharma, Bhajan Sopori, Pooyan Nassehpoor and Tarun Bhattacharya have popularized the Santoor around the world.

SPICMACAY is a movement formed to help disseminate the best of India’s and the world’s classical heritage with their attendant legends, rituals, mythology and philosophy in educational institutions.

It seeks to conserve and promote an awareness of this rich and heterogeneous cultural tapestry amongst the youth through focus on the classical arts, and to facilitate an awareness of their deeper and subtler values. The UCLA chapter of SPICMACAY is a non-profit voluntary student group.

India Post News Service

Resource: IndiaPost.com

Drummers of the world play for peace

Drummers of the world wish to play for peace. Iranian drummer, Peyman Nasehpour, now living in Osnabrück, Germany (the city for peace) supports the peace movement.

Stop the war! Keep the Earth!

Please Forward Drums for Peace Mass Drumming March 20th 7:00pm

This is the message sent by Jerry Moody, the leader of the drumming for peace movement:

I know its hard for us all to believe that this war has been going on
for 5 years. 3 years ago we held a world wide drumming event on March
20th to celebrate International Earth Day and the spring equinox. We
also wanted to point out the effect that the war is having on the
earth.

Now 5 years into the war we will drum again.

On March 20, 2008 in celebration of International Earth Day, Spring
Equinox, Alban Eilir, Eostar, Eostre, Feast of Annunciation of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, Festival of Trees, Lady Day, NawRuz, No Ruz,
Ostara, The Return of the Sun Serpent, Ostra, Rites of Spring,
Setsubun, and the Vernal Equinox. We are asking you to join us once
again, uniting our drums around the world for Hope and
Renewal.

If you would like to take part in the event you will need to drum from
7:00 until 8:30pm on March 20th.

Call your friends, make a party out of it… It’s time to Drum for
Hope and Renewal.

Please write me at upkentucky at yahoo.com of you are going to take
part so we can keep track of how far the drums sounded.

Please Join the New Morning Drums for Peace yahoo group at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/New-Morning-Drums-for-Peace/

Also visit gobigblue.com and click on New New Morning for a live forum.

Yours in Hope and Renewal

Jerry

New Morning Drums for Peace

No War in Iran

These days, much more than the past, I see reports and opinions about the increasing of the probability of US and its friends’ attack to Iran. These things may be just a “psychological war” to put more pressure on Iran, but they can make peace lovers more worried obviously and that’s why I am really worried.

War in Iraq and Afghanistan and the tension in the world is really more than enough and a new front of war in Middle East (like any kind of attack to Iran) will make the problem much more complicated.

Let’s have a peaceful world.

No War in Iran!

Fliegende Finger und rhythmische Klänge

Von Claudia Kolbeck Osnabrück

“Eins, zwei, drei, vier und: kleiner Finger, Ringfinger, Mittelfinger, Zeigefinger. Weiter mit der linken Hand.” – Mit solchen und ähnlichen Übungen führte der iranische Percussion-Virtuose Peyman Nasehpour rund 40 Osnabrücker in die Kunst der aserbaidschanischen und persischen Musik ein. In einem dreistündigen Workshop am “Institut für Musik” stellte der Künstler die Trommeln Tonbak, Daf und Ghaval aus seiner Heimat vor und zeigte dem Publikum grundlegende Techniken zum Spiel. Die Veranstaltung bildete einen der Schlusspunkte des Morgenland Festivals.

Mit einer Einführung über Aufbau und Tradition der Instrumente begann der Workshop, danach konnten die Teilnehmer üben: Durch Trommel- und Schnipstechniken und anhand leichter Rhythmen zeigte der Musiker den Osnabrückern, welche Fingerfertigkeiten man beherrschen muss, um die Instrumente aus seiner Heimat zu spielen. Und er wusste genau, wovon er sprach: Bereits im Alter von neun Jahren kam der Iraner in Berührung mit den traditionellen Instrumenten seines Kulturkreises.

Das Rhythmusgefühl wurde ihm quasi in die Wiege gelegt – sein Vater war Sänger, die Mutter ebenfalls musikalisch begabt, und so entfachte auch beim Nachwuchs schnell das Interesse für Rhythmen und Percussions. “Ich habe selbst sieben Jahre lang kontinuierlich geübt, um die Instrumente vollständig zu beherrschen, und danach durch viel Praxis immer weiter gelernt”, erklärte Nasehpour. Heute ist er weit über seine Heimat hinaus für seine Percussionkünste bekannt.

Ganz so viel Zeit hatten die Osnabrücker nicht zum Erlernen der Trommeltechniken, dennoch gefiel ihnen der Workshop offensichtlich: Besucher im Alter von neun bis über 50 Jahren verfolgten eifrig die Anweisungen des iranischen Lehrers. “Das Schnipsen auf der Oberfläche der Tonbak ist am schwierigsten”, befand Lukas Hülsmann nach kurzer Zeit. Sein Schlagzeuglehrer hatte ihn spontan mit zu dem Workshop genommen. Mit Erfolg – dem Neunjährigen gefiel der Schnellkurs: “Das macht viel Spaß, und einige Rhythmen kann ich schon nachspielen.”

Doch nicht nur die kleinen, auch die größeren Besucher versuchten sich begeistert an der fremdländischen Trommelkunst. Andreas Ottmer, Leiter einer Osnabrücker Musikschule etwa, war einer von ihnen. Er stand bereits gemeinsam mit Peyman Nasehpour auf der Bühne. “Ich wollte die Chance des Workshops einfach nutzen, um noch neue Techniken und Rhythmen zu lernen”, so der Osnabrücker. “Je besser ich meine Musikgruppen durch solche Percussions begleiten kann, desto mehr Spaß macht das Zusammenspiel.” Im Gegensatz zu manch anderem eifrigen Schüler hatte er dabei so gar keine Schwierigkeiten mit dem Schnipsen. “Das habe ich früher schon einmal für ein Stück geübt”, verriet er schmunzelnd.

Nach knapp drei Stunden Workshop klangen die anfangs eher zaghaften Trommler dann schon ziemlich rhythmisch. Begleitet wurden die Klänge von vielen freudigen Mienen – unter anderem von der von Peyman Nasehpour. “Ich würde mich freuen, wenn wir die Möglichkeit zu einer Fortsetzung des Workshops haben. Mir hat das Ganze viel Freude bereitet”, sagte der Musiker.

Source: Neue OZ

Family of Percussion Tours in Germany

The new pack of the percussion band, “Family of Percussion”, led by Peter Giger, legendary Swiss percussionist and bandleader, will tour in September of 2007, Germany. The “World Family of Percussion Pack” will perform in the following cities:

6.09.07 Domicil, Dortmund
7.09.07 Trommeltage, Aachen (September 2007 Special)
8.09.07 Frankfurt/Rödelheim, Cyriakuskirche
9.09.07 Stadtgarten Köln

“Family of Percussion” was founded by Peter Giger and his friends, Trilok Gurtu, Doug Hammond and Tom Nicholas 30 years ago in 1977.

The nine percussionists playing in the new pack are:

Peter Giger (Switzerland)

Tom Nicholas (USA)

Ibou Ndiaye (Senegal)

Ramesh Shotham (India)

Christoph Haberer (Germany)

Christopher Dell (Germany)

Hermann Kock (Germany)

Jonas Giger (Germany)

Peyman Nasehpour (Iran)

The group led by Peter Giger aims to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the “Family of Percussion”.

The Interview of Persian Mirror Online Magazine with Peyman Nasehpour

PersianMirror had an interview with me and now I have been informed by Ms. Shabnam Rezaei that it has been published today and it will be on the cover of the magazine for one week and the permanent link is:

INTERVIEW WITH MUSICIAN PEYMAN NASEHPOUR BY SHABNAM REZAEI

Born in Tehran to a family of musician, Peyman Nasehpour is one of the foremost experts on Persian music and more importantly wonderful instruments such as the daf and ghaval. We had a chance to talk to Peyman about his art form.

Shabnam Rezaei: Tell us about your childhood and what it was like growing up in Iran.

Peyman Nasehpour: My parents are both Azerbaijani so, as a mother tongue, I learnt Azeri and then Persian. My parents say I was interested in rhythm and drumming from an early age. My childhood was full of music, since my father is a professional master of Persian classical vocal music. Though my brothers, Pooyan and Parham, became instrumentalists, I was interested in percussion, so at the early age of 9, I had the honor to be the tonbak student of the late maestro Nasser Farhangfar, the great master of tonbak and one of the most popular drummers of Iran. My father used to want me to perform solos for our guests. I remember one of the first private concerts of mine was for my English teacher, Mrs. Ferdos Navabi. My first public concert was in 1988. Maestro Ali Akbar Shekarchi, the great master of kamancheh suggested that I play with some instrumentalists all of whom were much older than me.

SR: What have you learned from your father, the great Ostad Nasrollah Nasehpour?

PN: He is and has been more than a father for me. I have learned many things from my father but in the field of music, I learned of his empathy with the music and his effort to convey his knowledge to people. He has devoted all his life to training professional vocalists and some of his students are now famous vocalists in Iran and abroad. More or less I am following his line: to promote Iranian culture. Of course I am familiar with the radif repertoire of Persian vocal music, since my father has taught many of his students in our house in Tehran.

SR: Where did you go after Iran and how did you get started in playing tonbak, daf, and ghaval?

PN: I moved to Germany. Now beside my mathematical studies, I play in the solo form or with my brothers here and there. One of the workshops in Madrid was on “computational music theory” in Politecnica de Madrid University. I tried to explain how one can computerize some of the rhythms played in Persian, Azerbaijani and Kurdish music.

SR: Tell us a little about these wonderful Persian instruments?

PN: Well, as you know, I have written several articles about the drums played in Iran, and some other countries that are culturally related to Iran. Among those drums, my focus has been on the tonbak, ghaval and daf. The tonbak is the Persian goblet shaped drum and the chief percussion instrument played in Iran. It is played in all genres of Iranian / Persian music. The tonbak was considered an accompaniment instrument before the late maestro Hossein Tehrani, the father of modern tonbak. Only after this great master did the tonbak find a more important role in Iranian music. Though Iranian drummers need to work very hard to find a better status in music, thanks to the great masters of tonbak, this drum has become more recognised. The ghaval is the Azerbaijani frame drum. This drum is played in all genres of Azeri music, from folk to pop. Fortunately this drum has been promoted by American frame drummers and it is more or less known to fans of frame drums. One of the best ghaval players that I have seen is maestro Latif Tahmasebi-zadeh, a great ghaval player from Ardebil who now lives in Tehran. I have had the honor to be his student.

And finally, the daf is the frame drum played mainly in Kurdistan. But it is now in all genres of Iranian music. The promotion of this drum is due to Bijan Kamkar, the famous musician belonging to the Kamkar Music Group. The Daf is historically important too, since great Persian poets such as Rumi and Hafiz have mentioned this drum several times in their works. The Daf that was played in Sufi music in khanghah (Temple of Sufis) has been integrated into Iranian music successfully. One can learn more about these drums from my articles published in Internet, for example the one published on PersianMirror.

SR: What is the biggest misconception of Iran you face when trying to explain Iran to non-Iranians?

PN: When I say to non-Iranians that I am from Iran, they think I am Arab! They think Iran is just a desert! They really wonder when I explain that Iran has very high mountains like Damavand and Sabalan. I remember one of the artists in the PersianMirror explained that it was our fault that we were not able to promote our culture in the world. In my opinion she is right to some extent I am not disappointed at the misconceptions about Iran and Iranians. Instead of being unhappy we need to work really hard to promote our Iran and Iranian culture.

SR: What do you hope to achieve with your music and your online presence?

PN: I like to promote my culture all over the world, to show the positive faces of my country and my culture, and with my music and my online presence, I like to promote peace, love, respect and mutual understanding. I thank you and the PersianMirror for helping me in this matter.

SR: Tell us about your most recent project.

PN: My big project has been to promote the drums all over the world. Though thanks to some percussion websites that have published my articles on the Internet, (some of my articles have been online since 2000), I have been able to introduce the drums to some percussion lovers, but I am aware that I am at the beginning of the project and there is a long way to go. You can go to www.rhythmweb.com/peyman for more info.

SR: Desert Island. Three things. What will you take?

PN: My drums, my books and the Internet!

PersianMirror Quikfacts:

Full Name: Peyman Nasehpour

Favorite Color: Green

Favorite City: Tehran

Favorite Dish: Almost every Iranian food

Favorite Drink: Apple Juice

Languages: Azerbaijani, Persian and English.

Currently Reading: Mathematical books related to Algebra and “Where Mathematics Comes From: How the embodied mind bring mathematics into being”.

A brief history of Persian music websites in Internet

The author has been online since 1997. At that time there were a few websites on Persian music. Some of them were not professional and among them only Kereshmeh (in English) was great. It is online since 1995 and is still online and even now its information is great.

In 2000, Iran Melody, started its activities in selling Iranian music productions. The website is in English and Persian and sill online. The other old website on Persian music is Shayda of M. R. Lotfi that is still online, though it is a long time that it has not been updated.

One of the professional websites that is online since 2000 and is still useful for Iranian percussion lovers, is Tombak Network (in English). Tombak Network was established by Hormoz Dilmaghani and perhaps is the best resource for tonbak and Persian percussion.

In 2000, also many Persian music lovers started to establish Yahoo Groups discussion forums. Today some of them are not very active.

In 2001, some big websites on Persian music came to existance. Among them one can mention to Persian Art Music (it was mainly in Persian and now it is about two years that it is inactive, though still online) and Iran Flamenco that later it became a part of Art Music (in Persian). At those years other websites for music became online like Soroush Press (in Persian) and IRIB (both in Persian).

One of the first Iranian artists that became online in 2001 was Reza Vali. In the same year the website of Beethoven Music Center was introduced that is still active.

In 2002, Peyman Nasehpour (Iranian hand drummer), was one of the first Iranian musicians who offered his personal website, peyman and his tonbak, powered by tripod, that is still online, though he published his first work in Internet on Nov. 30th, 2000 at Tombak Network. He has been so active in promoting Persian percussion in Internet.

In 2003 at least 50 Yahoo Groups discussion forum were active discussing about Persian music and musicians that still some of them are active, but perhaps the best is Iran Zamin Music (in Persian) run by Maziar Ansari and some other moderators.

In 2004, when Iranian blogging fever started, many wrote about Persian music in their weblogs hosted by Persianblog. Today only a few of them are active. In second round Iranian blogging fever, many bloggers started to use Blogfa that many of them are very active. One can mention to Tahrir, Siyahmashgh and so on.

One year ago a very important event happened. Some young musicians gathered to create a website for gathering all useful links of Persian music in one place and linking to important music news. This website is Sol.ir. Perhaps it is the best directory for Persian music websites and its music news section is updated every day.

———-

The main reference for this article is the great article of Sadjad Pourghannad published at HarmonyTalk.com.

The great master of daf and Sufi music, Khalifeh Mirza Agha Ghosi passes away

Just some minutes ago a friend from Iran informed me that Khalifeh Mirza Agha Ghosi passed away in Sanandaj the center of the Kurdistan of Iran.

More info about him: Ostad Mirza Agha Ghosi

———-

پرنده نادر پرکشید

The News in Persian

Press conference for Morgenland Festival 2007

Yesterday on 16th July 2007, press conference for Morgenland Festival 2007 was held in Rathaus of Osnabrück, Germany. In this important event the director of the festival, Michael Dreyer, the Mayor of Osnabrück city, some of the sponsors, journalists from different medias and some other people had participated. In this news conference, Nasehpour Ensemble (Parham and Peyman) offered a short music performance for the participants.

The Osnabrück Newspaper that is the media partner of the Morgenland Festival 2007 reported the news.

For more info about Morgenland Festival 2007 programs please go to the following pages:

Morgenland Festival 2007

Morgenland Festival 2007 in Osnabrueck, Germany

Nasehpour Ensemble will have a concert and a workshop in Morgenland Festival 2007 held in Osnabrück, Germany.

Morgenland Festival presents Middle Eastern music from traditional up to avant-garde style from 19 August to 2 September. Some believe that the knowledge of Arab and Persian culture is frighteningly small and therefore the aim of the yearly festival since 2005 is to introduce Middle Eastern music and culture. Indeed most of Western instruments are originated in Middle East.

Within only two years morgenland festival has been considered one of the biggest music festivals of Germany. It has been so important that many international mass-medias like New York Times have reported that. For more info, one may go to its official page:

Morgenland Festival (in German)

Reza Vohdani the great master of Persian classical music

The great master of Persian classical music and outstanding tar and setar player, the late Dr. Reza Vohdani was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1933. He learned Persian classical music from the very great masters such as Ali Akbar Shahnazi, Alinaghi Vaziri, Abolhasan Saba and Esmaiel Mehrtash.

He collected and notated the famous radif of Mirza Hosseingholi (the very great master of tar and the father of Ali Akbar Shahnazi) since in the past radif was taught chest-to-chest (sineh-be-sineh) and finally after 30 years of working and teaching experiences, he published the notated radif of Mirza Hosseingholi.

The late maestro Reza Vohdani had many conferences and lecture-demonstrations in order to promote Persian classical music. He has composed many songs and musical pieces that they have not been published yet.

I had the chance to meet him personally in some music gatherings and conferences.

He passed away in 2003 because of cancer illness.

A website has been dedicated to him recently:

Reza Vohdani

To kill innocent people is not a joke!

Let’s bomb Iran is a website about the recent ugly joke of a politician who sang the sung “let’s bomb Iran”.

To kill innocent people is not a joke actually.

This is not the first threat of US politicians who always emphasize to use force to stop Iran in making nukes, while they themselves have nukes and they have nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki and I believe it will not be the last threat!

Meanwhile the only thing that caused me to write this short note is that this is perhaps for the first time that a politician expresses his threat to bomb Iran by making jokes!

The MoveOn.org wrote “war with Iran is not a joke.”

But those who joke with the history of a very old civilized society of Iran (by showing Persians as wild animals in the movie 300), may bomb Iran and kill innocent people just for their fun. Don’t you see innocent people are killed in Iraq and Afghanistan everyday?

Download Free Music

In this page, the links for downloading free music sound files are offered:

Download Tar, Kamancheh and Vocal Free MP3s from Iran, Azerbaijan and Armenia

Download Free MP3s of Persian, Indian, Arab, Western Classical, Gospel, POP, Folk, Country and Jazz Music from Dove Song MP3 Library

Introduction to Persian Drums

Introduction

We are very lucky that we live in an era where we are the first generation of humans to experience the communication benefits of the internet. In the past, people typically had to study books that researchers had written about different drums. Other people were fortunate to meet drummers from different parts of the globe, those who had the chance to travel to different countries and play their drums in some festivals. But today, with the help of the internet, you can visit many percussive web sites and become acquainted with the drums of many different cultures, all from the comfort of your own home.

In 1997, Peyman learned first hand of the power of the internet as a research and communications tool. The first drums that he found information on were the Indian tabla (this wonderful pair of small drums), and the Middle Eastern tabla or the doumbek (the name that has been used by Americans for this great goblet-shaped drum). It was noticed however, that there was almost no information about the drums of Persia (Iran), and so a decision was made to introduce them to people as soon as there was time and opportunity to do so. Since November of 2000, Peyman has been lucky enough to meet many kind people who promote different drums of the world, and with their help has published some articles about Persian drums such as tonbak, dayereh and daf.

In this article, a brief introduction of the historic journey of Persian drums to different parts of the world will be offered. The internet will allow the journey of information on these drums to other parts of the world much easier than ever before.

Tonbak: The Persian Goblet-shaped Drum

Tonbak is the chief percussion instrument, and the first national drum of Persia (Iran). Etymology states that the Pahlavi (Persian pre-Islamic language) name of this drum was dombalak. Though there are many ancient manuscripts attesting to the different names of this drum, the oldest documented pictures that have been found by the author and his friend, Mehdi Moghiseh, are two Persian paintings painted in the 16th century showing some gypsy drummers and dancers, including tonbak players.

The name dombalak is still used in Turkey today. In Turkish dialect it is called dumbelek. A similar name is the name of the Greek goblet drum, which is called toubeleki. The doumbek, with different spellings such as dumbek, doumbeq, dumbeq and so on, has been brought to the USA by Middle Eastern immigrants, and is also related to these names.

The tonbak is played with a style that is very different from the style that the other goblet drums are played with, though they seem very similar at first sight. Also, the similarity of the names of different goblet drums should not cause the reader to assume that all goblet drums are played with the same style. The Turkish style is different from the Arabic style, although there are some similarities also. In Turkish style, like the Persian style, finger snapping is used. However, the structure of Arabic goblet drums doesn’t let you play finger snaps on it.

Fortunately for the Arabic/Turkish goblet drums, they have received widespread promotion. On the other hand, the Persian goblet drum is still relatively unknown today. The only goblet drum that the author knows is played similar to the Persian goblet drum, is the Afghani goblet drum which is called zirbaghali.

Thanks to many Iranian tonbak masters such as Hussein Tehrani (the father of modern tonbak) and Nasser Farhangfar, the awareness of the tonbak in the general population of Iran has progressed very much.

Dayereh: The Persian Frame Drum

Dayereh is one of the most popular frame drums played in the regional music of Iran today. Though it is not used in Persian art music, you can find it in many different regions of Iran. One of the most important styles of frame drumming in Iran is the Azerbaijani style played on the Azerbaijani frame drum called ghaval. Again, the similarity of the names of different frame drums should not cause us to assume that they are all played in the same style.

The Pahlavi (Persian pre-Islamic language) name of dayereh is dareh. This name is still in use in Dezful city of Iran. The pandeiro of Spain, Portugal and Brazil is related to the dayereh.

Ghaval is the Azerbaijani frame drum and is known by Persians as dayereh-ye-azari, which means Azerbaijani dayereh. Ghaval was the accompaniment drum in Azerbaijani art and folk music. The legendary ghaval player, Latif Tahmasebi-zadeh, has played many ghaval solos and added some interesting new techniques to the art of ghaval playing.

Thanks to some frame drummers and drum makers in the western world, this drum has been introduced to the western world, but more promotion is still needed yet.

Daf: The Persian Frame Drum

Daf is a very famous drum in Iran that was used in Sufi music. Many famous poets such as Hafiz and Rumi have mentioned to this drum in their poems. Thanks to many daf players, particularly daf players from Kurdistan of Iran, this drum has been widely promoted in Iran, and today it is considered to be the second national drum of Iran (Persia).

Originally, the Pahlavi name of daf was dap. Daf in Arabic countries is called duff and the adufe (the Portuguese drum) is related to this drum. The name dap is still used in Uyghuristan of China today.

Acknowledgement: The author wishes to thank David Johannes of Drum Journey, who helped to make the English of this article more understandable, and for publishing it to make it available to those who are interested in the drums of different cultures.

Tonbak and Daf, the Two National Drums of Iran (Persia)

An Article by Peyman Nasehpour

Tonbak is the Persian goblet drum and chief drum of Persian music. Goblet-shaped drums are played in different regions of Asia, East Europe and North Africa. Though there are some similarities among all goblet drums, but the techniques for playing the tonbak is very different from the other goblet drums of the world. The finger patterns and techniques of the only goblet drum that is very similar to the tonbak is zirbaghali (the Afghani goblet drum).

The structure of tonbak is considered to have five parts: Skin, Body, Throat, Small Opening and Large Opening. Skin of Tonbak is glued on the head of Tonbak. Goatskin is most popular. Body of Tonbak is wooden. This is in fact the sound box of Tonbak. Sometimes many furrows are carved on its wood. Throat is almost cylindrical and it is connected from top to the body. Tonbak is open from the top and bottom. Small opening is in the bottom. It is similar to the mouth of trumpet. In fact throat and small opening together are in the form of a trumpet. Large opening is in the top and the skin is covered on it.

Daf is the Persian frame drum. There are many similar frame drums in all over the world. The structure of daf is divided into six parts as follows: Frame is wooden. The diameter of the frame is 48-53 centimeters. The width of the frame is 5-7 centimeters. Skin is glued on the frame. The most popular is goatskin. Pins are applied in behind part of the frame in order to keep the skin on the frame tightly. Hooks are applied in order to hang the rings in the inner part of frame. Rings are the jingles of daf. Leather band is applied in order to help the player for long duration performances.

Tonbak and daf are considered as pre-Islamic drums of Persia, since there are some pre-Islamic books mentioning to the names of these drums. The Pahlavi (Persian language spoken during pre-Islamic ages) name of the tonbak is dombalag. And etymologists believe that the name tonbak and similar names such as tombak, donbak and dombak and so on have been all derived from this Pahlavi name. It is so interesting that even today the word dumbelek is used for the Turkish goblet drum. I wonder if there is any relationship between the tonbak and gedombak, the Malay goblet drum. The Pahlavi name of daf is dap and it is believed that daf is the Arabicized name of dap. The name daf with its different dialects used in some other areas is not the aim of this article to be discussed here. Only one point that the name dap even today is used in Uyghuristan (a part of today China).

Unfortunately the history of Persian musical instruments is in dispute. The history of Persian music shows that many books have been written on Persian music and it is unfortunate that many of them have not survived and many of them that have survived have not been published in Iran.

According to my personal research, there are no books for describing Persian drums, though in many books many names of Persian drums have been mentioned. What we know is that tonbak and daf were played in the past, but how, I have not found any info!

Anyway, my friend, Mr. Mehdi Moghiceh (painter) and I found two Persian paintings belonging to 16th century, showing some gypsy tonbak, daf and dohol (Persian cylindrical drum) players. Also recently I found a poem of the very famous poet, Amir Khosro Dehlavi, mentioning to tonbak-e-hindi that should be a kind of Indian goblet drum, maybe related to Kashmiri goblet drum, tumbaknari.

Today, Tonbak is played in different genres of Persian music: It is played in Persian art music genre. Thanks to many books written on the tonbak recently, we know much about the tonbak and tonbak players from ghajar period up to present. Also it is played in motrebi style. Motrebi music is that genre of music that is played in some festive occasions such as wedding ceremonies, though today unfortunately this style of tonbak playing is going to be forgotten. It is played in regional (folk) music of Persia, particularly the regions of Lorestan, Kurdistan and Hormozgan too. Another kind of tonbak, called tonbak-e-zourkhaneh, that its size is larger than ordinary tonbak, is played in zourkhaneh, Persian traditional gymnasium.

Fortunately there are more paintings showing people playing frame drums. Daf, in the works of many poets such as Hafiz, Rumi have been mentioned and it has been the chief instrument of many Sufi gatherings. Even today daf is played in khangah (temple of Sufis).

What is important here is to mention that daf was considered a spiritual frame drum to be played in Sufi gatherings. Thanks to many daf players, recently daf has been promoted in Iran very much. This instrument that was considered only a Sufi drum to be played khangah (temple of Sufis), now it is played in many other Persian music genres successfully so that it is considered the second national drum of Iran beside the tonbak.

Sufi rhythms are played in Persian art music after the introduction of the daf to this genre of music. On the other hand, some modern daf players applied tonbak techniques on the daf. Therefore today we have two major styles for daf playing, one the traditional khangah style and the other modern style to be nurtured in Tehran.

Kettledrums of Persia (Iran) and some other countries

An Article by Peyman Nasehpour

Introduction.

Persian large-sized kettledrums are called Kus. Many poets have mentioned the word Kus in their works. It is a pair of drums made of clay, wood or metal in the form of a hemispherical kettle, with skin stretched over the mouth of it. Kus was played with leather or wood drumsticks (The leather drumstick was called Daval). Kus usually was carried on horseback, camelback or elephantback. It was played in many occasions such as festivals, wars, decamping and so on.

It was the accompaniment of the Karnay (Persian trumpet or horn). Particularly the Persian epic poets Ferdosi and Nezami have mentioned Kus and Karnay when describing the battlefields. Many Persian paintings (miniatures) show the presence and importance of the Kus and Karnay in the battlefields. There were applied to encourage the army. The antiquity of the Kus and Karnay reaches Achaemenid period (533-330 B.C.).

After Islam the word Naghghareh has been used for small-sized kettledrums of the world of Islam. It seems that the word Naghghareh comes from the Arabic verb Naghr that means to strike and to beat (Today in Turkey Naghghareh is called Nakkare). A few poets have mentioned the name Naghghareh such as Molana Rumi. There is a Persian popular poem that mentions the Naghghareh.

The translation of the above poem is:

Dambel-e-Dimbo Naghghareh!
The bride has not Tonban [long, loose skirt formerly worn by women]!
The bridegroom has gone to fetch one
May he comes back healthy

Dambel-e-Dimbo or Zimbil-i-Zimbo is the sound made by a drum (compare with Rub-a-Dub in English).

This is a very important poem because the rhythm of the verses calls to mind the rhythm of ‘chahar-chubeh’ of Mazandarani regional, which is played by Desarkutan.

Different names such as Gavorga, Kaseh, Khom, Naghghareh and many similar names have been applied for the kettledrums. For more information about these names please refer to:

Encyclopedia of Persian Percussion Instruments

Iran (Persia)

Naghghareh can be found in different sizes in different regions of Iran:

Naghareh-ye-Shomal (northen naghareh)

One of them is Naghghareh-ye-Shomal that is played in North of Iran. Its native name in Mazandaran province of Iran is Desarkutan. Desarkutan is in fact a pair of small drums. The body of drums is made of clay. Their structure is like bowl. One is larger than the other. The large one is called bam and the smaller one is called zil. It should be mentioned here that bam and zil respectively mean bass and treble. The diameter of the bam is about 22 centimeters and the diameter of the zil is about 16 centimeters. Two drums are covered by cow’s skin, though in the past the skin of boar was used. The skin is tightened on the drums by bands to be made of cow cut. The drums are played with two wooden drumsticks. The length of the drumsticks is from 25 to 27 centimeters. The thicker drumstick is used to play on the larger drum. The diameter of the drumsticks is from 1 to 1.5 centimeter.

Serna (Mazandarani oboe, same as Persian Sorna) is accompanied by one or two Desarkutan-s. These instruments are played in festive ceremonies such as wedding ceremonies, sport ceremonies and so on. Desarkutan is not used as a solo instrument.

It is really wonderful that we have the same occasion in India. Naghghareh can be found in India and its native name is Nagada or Nagara.

Nagara of India is a pair of drums. These are the kettledrums of old ‘naubat’ (traditional ensemble of nine instruments). It is played with sticks. Today this instrument is usually used to accompany the shehnai (Indian oboe). Shehnai is an indispensable component of any North Indian wedding (shadi).

Naghghareh-ye-Azerbaijan

In Azerbaijan there is a kind of kettledrum that is called Ghosha-Naghara. Ghosha literally means pair.

Naghghareh-ye-Fars

The Naghghareh played in the Fars province of Iran is a little larger than ordinary Naghghareh.

Naghghareh-ye-Sanandaj

The Naghghareh played in the Sanandaj city of Kurdistan province of Iran is a little larger than ordinary Naghghareh.

Egypt and the Other Arabic Countries

The Naqqarat is the name of kettledrums to be applied in Arabic countries. Naqqarat, hemispherical with the skin stretched over the top, come in pairs. The larger ones are carried on camels and played during the pilgrimages. Another type is used to accompany one of the Mawlawi ceremonies. Under the late Abbasids and Fatimids in Egypt, kettledrums were beaten before the five daily prayers, and small ones form part of the present-day orchestral ensembles.

Turkey

In Turkey Naghghareh is called Nakkare (small kettledrums beaten with the hands or two sticks). The Kös (giant kettledrums) played on horseback that is a dialect of the Persian Kus. These drums and davul (Turkish cylindrical drum) were used in the Ottoman Mehter Music. (Mehter is a Persian word and means greater, senior, elder and groom).

Uzbekistan

In Uzbekistan the kettledrum is called Naghara.

Dul-Naghara is a large kettledrum that gives a low and loud sound (i.e. “tum”).
Rez-Naghara is a small kettledrum that gives a high and loud sound (i.e. “tak”).
Kosh-Naghara is a small-paired kettledrum, a pair of clay pots with goatskin tops.

Naghghareh goes to Europe.

According to history with the Islamic culture the kettledrums spread through other parts of Asia, Africa and Europe.

I should mention that kettledrums were adopted in Europe during the Crusades (13th century). The Arabic term Naghghareh became the French Nacaires, the Italian Naccheroni and the English Nakers. Nakers have been described like this:

They were more or less hemispherical, 15-25cm in diameter, frequently with snares and usually played in pairs, suspended in front of the player. They were usually played with drumsticks, mainly for martial purposes but also in chamber music, dance and processional music and probably for accompanying songs.

Kettledrums in Europe today are called tympani or timpani. They entered the symphony orchestra as a purely musical instrument in the mid 17th century; they were played in pairs tuned to tonic and dominant pitches. Beethoven was the first composer to vary the tuning of kettledrums from the conventional tonic-dominant. Berlioz was possibly the first to require a change of tuning during a single movement. Bartok made use of the glissando, which is a rapid slurring effect created by mechanical tuning of the kettledrum.

Indian Tabla and Persian Naghghareh

As the excellent study of tabla by Rebecca Stewart (The Tabla in Perspective. Unpublished thesis, UCLA, 1974) has suggested tabla was most likely a hybrid resulting from experiments with existing drums such as pakhawaj, dholak, and naqqara. The origins of tabla repertoire and technique may be found in all three and in physical structure there are also elements of all three: for example, the smaller pakhawaj head for the dayan, the naqqara kettledrum for the bayan, and the flexible use of the bass of the dholak.

Naghghareh-Khaneh

Khaneh literally means house, home, room, place etc. In Iran there were different kinds of Naghghareh-Khaneh and there were places for announcing important news by playing on the kettledrums such as rising and setting of the sun, victory, mourning, birth of a male baby etc. Naghghareh-Khaneh is also called Kus-Khaneh or Naubat-Khaneh.

References:

[[C]: David R. Courtney, Fundamentals of Tabla, Vol.I, Sur Sangeet Services, Houston, 1998.
[Le]: The World of Islam, Written by Thirteen Authors (Edited by Bernard Lewis), London, 1976.
[Ly]: Debby Lyttle, A Brief History of the Timpani, 1998.
[G]: Jamshid Gholi-Nejad, Musighi-ye-Bumi-ye-Mazandaran, Sari City, 2000.
[K]: James Kippen, A Brief Discussion of the Delhi Tabla Gharana.
[Sa]: Cemsid Salehpur, Türkçe Farsça Genel Sözlügü, Tehran, 1996.
[Se]: Mehdi Setayeshgar, Vazhe-Name-ye-Musighi-ye-Iran Zamin, Tehran, Vol. I (1995) & Vol. II (1996).

Dohol and Related Cylindrical Drums

An Article by Peyman Nasehpour

Introduction.

Dohol is a double-headed cylindrical drum for accompanying the sorna (Persian oboe) to be played in outdoors in regional music of Persia in the festive ceremonies. Different names are applied for this drum in Iran and other countries. In this article I will discuss different versions of this instrument in different regions. Any other information is welcomed.

Armenia

Dhol is an Armenian cylindrical drum traditionally covered with goatskin on both sides, one high and one low in pitch. It is covered with pre-fabricated head which is unaffected by changes in humidity, unlike natural skin. Played with the fingers and hands the dhol rests in your lap and sets off to one side with one arm resting on top of the drum. This is the same as Azerbaijani naghara. There is a proverb in Azerbaijani language that says toy-dan-sora-naghara! This literally means after the wedding ceremonies naghara!

Baluchestan of Persia

Dohol: Persian dohol.

Timbook: Small dohol.

Doholak: This is a small dohol but longer than timbook, to be played by two hands. There are two kinds of doholak; one is tunable while the other is not.

Bulgaria

In Bulgaria dohol is called tupan. It has a cylindrical wooden body on which two goat skin or sheep skin is stretched by means of a hoop and lacing. The tupan is played like the Persian dohol.

Egypt

In Egypt dohol is called tabl ballady.

Greece

In Greece dohol is called dauli.

Kurdistan

The dohol in Kurdistan is called daval. Daval is one of the most broadly used percussion instruments in festive ceremonies by the Kurds of Iran, Iraq and Turkey. The daval along with the saz (another name of sorna, Persian oboe) is played during group dances. It makes a very loud sound. The instrument is played by a stick-shaped cane in the right hand and a thin stick in the left. The cane like stick plays the strong beats of the rhythm, whereas the thin stick plays the ornaments and shorter beats.

India

There are three cylindrical drums in India that seems to be related to Persian dohol. Here is a brief description of the drums.

Dholak: A crude folk drum characterized by a cylindrical shell covered with skin on both sides. The name is Persian and a diminutive of Dhol, but this drum is of a distinct type, with its own historical roots. The dholak survives chiefly in North-Central and Northwest India and Pakistan, among performers such as the qawwal (singers of Muslim devotional music, qawwali), the Manganiyar musicians of Rajasthan etc.

Dholki: A small cylindrical folk drum, called also nal, popular in tamasha (street performance) of Maharashtra.

Tavil: A large cylindrical drum used in south Indian temples and wedding ceremonies sometimes accompanying the nadaswaram (a large south Indian oboe used in temples and wedding ceremonies).

Some believe that dohol and the other dialects of this name come from the Sanskrit name dholaka. Today dholaka is a kind of cylindrical Hindi drum.

Macedonia

In Macedonia dohol is called tapan. Tapan accompanies zurna (Macedonian oboe) in festive occasions such as wedding ceremonies. It is believed that these instruments are borrowed from the Turkish culture, while the others believe that they are borrowed from Persian culture. The musical culture of Turkey and Persia are very similar and at times very difficult to make a distinction.

Persia

Dohol is a big cylindrical two-faced drum to be played by two special drumsticks. One is a wooden thick stick that is bowed at the end and its name is Changal (or Kajaki). The other is a thin wooden twig and its name is Deyrak. (In Hormozgan province of Iran, Dohol is played by two hands.) Dohol is the main accompaniment of Sorna (Persian oboe). It is played in outdoors in regional music of Persia in the festive ceremonies (The famous poet Molana Rumi has mentioned sorna and dohol in his poems). Dobol is a dialect of dohol in Shushtar a city in Khuzestan province of Iran. Dohol is called daval in Kurdistan. Saz-daval is an expression for sorna and dohol in Kurdistan. Other names such as davul, tavel and so on have been applied too. Since dohol is a double-faced drum sometimes it is called do-ruyeh in Persian language. I should mention that ghaval and daf are yek-ruyeh (one-faced).
There are some proverbs in Iran about this drum. The most famous proverb that many poets have been used in their works is: “Avaz-e-dohol shenidan az dur khosh ast” that literally means dohol sounds pleasant from a distance.

The famous Persian astronomer-mathematician-poet, Hakim Omar Khayyam Naishpuri (1048-1131), the creator of the Jalali Calendar and contributor to Non-Euclidean Geometry, has composed the following robai (quatrain) that involves the above proverb:

The English translation by Edward Fitzgerald is:
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the promise go,
Nor heed the music of a distant Drum [dohol]!

There are some expressions for dohol player in Persian language such as doholchi, doholzan, doholnavaz and doholkub. It is said that only sornachi (sorna player) is able to meet the protests of doholchi!

Russia

In Russia dohol is called tumyr.

Sri Lanka

The Sri Lankan “dolak” is used extensively in Sri Lanka, in both Buddhist and Hindu communities, to accompany musical forms imported from India. It is now usually conical in shape, with a badama spot (which affects the tuning and timbre) on one head. The hemp (or nylon) braces pass lengthways down the drum, through metal rings and over wooden blocks, both of which are used for tuning.

The term is also used more or less indiscriminately in Sri Lanka to denote any folk or popular drum, those that are more properly termed demala-bere, for example, often being called dolak.

Turkey

In Turkey dohol is called davul that is the accompaniment of zurna (Turkish oboe). It varies in sizes. One side is made of goatskin; the other side is made of sheepskin. It is played while hung on the shoulder with knitted or leather strap. The thin-skinned is beaten with a light wooden stick or twig, and the thick side is hit with a tokmak (in Persian and Azerbaijani tokhmagh that it literally means beetle but here a heavy drumstick for producing the bass sound). The davul is generally played in outdoors. There is a proverb in Turkish language that is interesting to mention here: Davul birinin boynunda, tokmak bir baskasinin elinde. This literally means: The davul in on the shoulder of one person while the tokmak (heavy drumstick) is in the hand of the other person! Another proverb is: davulun sesi ozaktan hos gelir that literally means: the distant davul sounds pleasant. The latter one is exactly the same as the Persian proverb mentioned in above. I should mention that there is another cylindrical drum in Turkey that is called naghara (nagara) and is defined in Turkish koltuk davulu that means armpit davul. Koltuk (in Azerbaijani, gholtukh) means armpit. This is similar to Azerbaijani naghara and Armenian dhol.

Yugoslavia

In Yugoslavia dohol is called teppan.

Acknowledgment. The author wishes to thank Ms. Anna Smart for e-mailing the information about the Sri Lankan dolak.

References:

[AA]: Abbas Aryanpur and Manoochehr Aryanpur, The Concise Persian-English Dictionary, Amir Kabir Publication Organization, Tehran, 1990.
[C]: David R. Courtney, Fundamentals of Tabla, Vol.I, Sur Sangeet Services, Houston, 1998.
[D]: B. Chaintanya Deva, Indian Music, New Delhi, 1974.
[K]: Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayyam in 30 languages, by effort of Mohsen Ramezani, Padideh Publication, Tehran, 1987.
[P]: Mehran Poor Mandan, The Encyclopedia of Iranian Old Music, Tehran, 2000.
[SA]: Cemsid Salehpur, Türkçe Farsça Genel Sözlügü, Tehran, 1996.
[SE]: Mehdi Setayeshgar, Vazhe-Name-ye-Musighi-ye-Iran Zamin, Tehran, Vol. I (1995) & Vol. II (1996).

Frame drums in Asia, North Africa and East Europe

By Peyman Nasehpour

Abstract

Daf is one of the percussion-skinned instruments of Persia that it has become very popular these years. In Middle East there is a broad class of drums known to musicologists as Frame Drums. In this article I will discuss these percussion instruments.

Introduction

Frame Drums are the musicologist’s term for a class of percussion instruments constructed of a shallow cylindrical frame over which a skin is stretched and may or may not have jingles. Persian Daf (left) is a good example of a frame drum with jingles. The history of the frame drum begins in the ancient Middle East. The following is a list of frame drums:

Afghanistan

Daira – Daira is a frame drum similar to Persian Dayereh.

Armenia

Dap – A medium to large sized frame drum without jingles similar to the Duff. It is used mainly in classical and folk music. Other spellings of this instrument are Daf and Def.

Azerbaijan

Ghaval – A medium to large sized frame drum with jingles same as Persian Dayereh. It is used in classical and folk music. It is usually played by singers. Ostad Latif Tahmasebi-zadeh, Persian Ghaval player is a pioneer of modern method of Ghaval playing.

Egypt and Arab Countries

Riq- Small, tambourine-like frame drum used in classical, popular, and dance music. Other spellings are Riqq, Req, Rik, and Rikk.

Mazhar – A bass version of the Riq common in popular, dance and folk music.

Duff – A large diameter frame drum with no jingles used to provide bass rhythm accompaniment. Other spellings are Daf and Deff, and Taf. These names and the ancient name Tof must have the same root.

Bendir: A frame drum with jingles. The Bendir is a typical frame drum. Similar instruments are common in the whole Near East from Morocco to Iraq and also in Northern Africa. The special feature of this Instrument lies in the snare strings that run inside the instruments body near the drum skin.

Tar: A frame drum with a single head, played with the hands. Often has a hole in the rim for the left thumb. This drum is found all over North Africa and has many names and one of them is Tar. It is common throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East also. Traditionally, this drum is played with the fingers, holding the drum in front of you, drumhead facing out. You can use your hand or a stick if preferred. Skin headed Tars are very temperature sensitive and will crack if left in the heat, such as in direct sun or in a car. If the drumhead is too tight, lightly mist with water.

India

Daf – In India there are many different types of Frame Drums, one of them is Daf. It is interesting to say that Indian Daf is played by drumsticks. It is quite large, about two feet across, with a conspicuous absence of jingles. It is commonly used in folk music but is rarely heard in other styles. It is also called dapphu, daffali and number of other names.

Kanjira – Kanjira is a small Frame Drum from South India. Stretching lizard skin over a wooden frame with one metal jingle mounted in it makes it. The skin is kept loose, and the pitch manipulated by squeezing the head at the bottom, near the rim, while striking it with the other hand. The lizard skin is very susceptible to changes in climate.

Persia

Daf – Daf is one of the most ancient frame drums in Asia and North Africa. As an Persian instrument, in 20th century, it is considered as a Sufi instrument to be played in Khanghah-s during Zikr ceremony. Daf has recently become very popular and it has been integrated into Persian music successfully.

Dayereh – Dayereh is Persian Frame Drum. There is variety of names for this instrument in different regions of Persia. It is called Dariye in Kashan, Dizeh in Bojnord, Deyreh in Birjand, Das-Dayereh in Mazandaran, Dayereh in Bushehr, Dara in Dezful and Diyareh in Talesh.

Tajikistan

Doira – Doira is a frame drum similar to Persian Dayereh.

Turkey

In Turkey there are many different types of Frame Drums. One of them is Tef. It is the same as Persian Daf.

Mazhar – This is a percussion instrument made by stretching a skin over a wooden hoop. Rhythm is produced by striking it with the fingers.

Uyghuristan

In Uyghuristan there are two basic kinds:

Kichik Dap is about 25 cm in diameter, with a wood frame, and is used for playing the rhythm part in the Twelve Muqams (Kichik is a Turkish word and literally means small Please compare with the Persian word Kuchak which means small also). The larger Dap is about 75 cm in diameter and used for dance tunes.

Uzbekistan

Dayera – Dayera is a frame drum similar to Persian Dayereh.

Acknowledgement

The author wishes to thank Hormoz Dilmaghani for his technical support and Prof. Nathan Light for the information on the Frame Drums of Uyghuristan. Some of this information has been gathered from Internet.

References

B. Chaintanya Deva, Indian Music, New Delhi, 1974.
David R. Courtney, Fundamentals of Tabla, Vol.I, Sur Sangeet Services, Houston, 1998.
Mehran Poormandan, The Encyclopedia of Iranian Old Music, Tehran, 2000.
Cemsid Salehpur, Türkçe Farsça Genel Sözlügü, Tehran, 1996.
Mehdi Setayeshgar, Vazhe-Name-ye-Musighi-ye-Iran Zamin, Tehran, Vol. I (1995) & Vol. II (1996).

Ghaval, the Azerbaijani Frame Drum

An Article by Peyman Nasehpour

Ghaval (also spelled gaval in Azerbaijani latin alphabets and not to be confused with qawwali music) the Azerbaijani frame drum is played in Azerbaijani folk and art music. In folk music of Azerbaijan Ashigh (poet-musician) sings and plays on gopuz (nine-stringed long-necked lute) and sometimes composes poems in different festive occasions. The drum that usually accompanies the Ashigh is ghaval. In Azerbaijani art music a traditional ensemble contains a singer, which plays on ghaval and two instrumentalists, one plays on tar (long-necked lute) and the other plays on kamancheh (bowed spike fiddle). In modern art music of Azerbaijan an ensemble can contain more than two instrumentalists. Usually the drum that accompanies the modern ensemble is naghara (a kind of cylindrical drum that is called in Armenia dhol).

Ghaval is the same as Persian dayereh. In Persia (Iran) there are different types of frame drum. But only daf is considered as the only national frame drum. It is unfortunate that ghaval is not integrated into Persian art music like the daf, though some ghaval players particularly the late Mahmoud Farnam tried to do this by accompanying the great masters of Persian art music, Ostad Eghbal Azar (very skillful vocalist) and Ostad Gholam Hossein Bigchekhani (very skillful tar player).

The history of dayereh goes back to many centuries. An engraved bronze cup from Lorestan at the Notional Museum of Iran, Tehran, portrays a double ney (reed pipes), chang (harp), and dayereh in a shrine or court processional, as similarly documented in Egypt, Elam, and Babylonia where music involved the utilization of large orchestral ensembles.

Some believe that the word dayereh comes from the Pahlavi (Persian pre-Islamic language) name dareh. Abu Saeed Abolkheir (967-1048), the poet, has mentioned in his works to the word dayereh as a drum.

Ghaval was not considered a solo instrument. After the effort of Ostad Latif Tahmasebi-zadeh ghaval has found an independent role.

Ghaval’s frame is wooden and the skin stretched on it can be goatskin or fish skin, though today the head of modern ghavals is synthetic (plastic) because the skin-headed ghaval is sensitive to changes in humidity. Some metal rings are incorporated into the drum to provide jingle. Its is much larger than Western tambourine but smaller than daf.

Basic Rhythms of Ghaval

There are four basic rhythms in Azerbaijani art music.

Diringi: Diringi is a light rhythm for dance music, though it is found in vocal music also. It is played in both low and high tempo, depending on the occasion of the performance. Diringi can be considered the same as Persian Reng.

Diringi is in 6 beats.

Yalli: Yalli is another light rhythm for different rhythmic compositions of vocal and instrumental music.

Yalli is in 4 beats.

Lazgi: Lazgi is the most famous Azerbaijani dance. It is played in medium to high tempo. It is for instrumental music.

Lazgi is in 6 beats.

Mahni: Mahni is in fact the rhythmic form for vocal music. The most famous rhythm for Mahni has been linked here. Mahni can be considered the same as Persian Tasnif.

6 beat version of Mahni.

Free ghaval lesson at rhythmweb

Glossary

Ashigh: (Pl. Ashighlar) Some believe that Ashigh comes from the Arabic word eshgh (love). While the others believe that Ashigh comes from Ashk and Ashkanian. They reach the history of Ashigh to the Ashkanian period (Parthian period 247 B.C.-224 A.D.) and they mention to this point that Ashghabad (capital of today Republic of Turkmenistan) had been one of the most important centers of Ashkanian. A famous tradition in the art of Ashighlar is really wonderful. This tradition that is called de’ishma is a kind of musical debate. According to a very old tradition of the skillful Ashigh-s, occasionally the Ashigh-s do this musical debate (de’ishma) and every Ashigh that loses should give his instrument (the saz or the gopuz) to the winner and leave his job. In this musical debate to compose poems by improvisation is often the winning trump.

Gopuz: Gopuz is the long-necked lute to be played by the Ashigh in Azerbaijan. It is called Saz too and Saz is generic name for musical instrument in Iran, Turkey and India. There is a similar instrument to gopuz in Turkey that is called Baglama.

Kamancheh: Kamancheh is bowed spike fiddle to be played in Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Central Asia, Turkey and Egypt. Kaman literally means bow. Many musicologists consider the kamancheh the predecessor of the violin.

Qawwali: Qawwali or ghawwali or kawali is the Islamic devotional song. It is a lively, light style, which has a popular appeal for both Muslims and Hindus alike.

Tar: Tar is a long-necked lute to be played in Iran. Its Persian version sometimes is called tar-e-shiraz (tar of Shiraz which is one of the most important cities of Persia and located in SW) and its Azerbaijani version is called tar-e-ghafghaz (tar of Caucasus). Tar literally means string, chord and so on. The word tar can be see in some other musical instruments such as ektar, dotar, setar, sitar, khoshtar and guitar. Not to be confused with Egyptian tar witch is a kind of frame drum.

References:

[N]: Peyman Nasehpour, Personal Interview with Ostad Latif Tahmasebi-zadeh, Aug. 1994-Aug. 1995.
[S]: Mehdi Setayeshgar, Vazhe-Name-ye-Musighi-ye-Iran Zamin, Tehran, Vol. I (1995) & Vol. II (1996).

The art of world percussion styles

Percussion instruments are played with hands or sticks and some drums are played with both, i.e. while one hand uses a stick, the other hand uses palm and fingers to play the drum. For example in Iran (Persia), there are some drummers who play the dohol (double faced cylindrical drum) in a way that one face is played by the hand of the artist, while the other face is played by a stick.

It is obvious that it is not easy to explain about all playing styles of world percussion instruments in this short note, but hopefully with some good examples and links, one can learn more. One may consider percussion instruments in four sub-categories:

1) Percussion instruments made of wood or metal (but not having skins for producing sounds) and played by sticks. Good examples are: marimba, xylophone, triangle and txalaparta. One may consider piano and hammered dulcimers in this category too.

2) Percussion instruments made of wood or clay (but not having skins for producing sounds) and played by hands. Good examples are: cajon, ghatam, udu and so on…

It is clear that the most important sub-category of percussion instruments is drums, therefore one may consider drums in two important sub-categories:

3) Drums played by sticks and good examples are: timpani, dohol (Persian cylindrical drum) and so on…

4) Drums played by hands and good examples are: djembe, doumbek, daf, bongo, conga, tabla and so on…

How to play hand drums

Since hand drums are too many drums with different shapes and every hand drum has its own hand drumming techniques, therefore it is almost impossible to give a formula or a method for playing hand drums. Even those drums that are similar to each other have very different methods of playing. For example goblet shaped drums are so similar to each other, but the way that the Persian goblet drum (tonbak) is played is somehow very different from the way that Egyptian goblet drum (tablah) is played.

Traditionally every drum has its own techniques that are the result of the experience of many drummers. Today with the help of Internet that many drummers of different regions have been connected to each other, people are going to use the techniques of different hand drums on their own drums and hopefully this will enrich the techniques of all hand drums.

Tonbak (Persian hand drum) is one of very rare hand drums in the world that is played with all fingers of the drummer.

Perhaps one of the best resources for world percussion is rhythmweb. Therefore if one likes to learn more about the art of world percussion styles, rhythmweb.com is strongly recommended.

Some other useful links:

Drums Database

Drum Dojo

Drum Journey

Styles of Tonbak Playing in Classical Music of Persia

An Article by Peyman Nasehpour

Introduction

Every artist has his own unique style. Therefore, any classification will be very broadly based. Modern method of playing Tonbak can be divided into four major overlapping styles. One of them is based on traditional style of playing Tonbak and recent masters have developed the others.

Tonbak Players of the Past

Before Ostad Hosain Tehrani we had a primitive style of tonbak playing. Tasnifkhans (Tasnif performers) were playing on tonbak and it was considered as an accompaniment instrument. A good example for this style is Ostad Abdollah Davami. According to our information the oldest tonbak player that had this style is Agha Jan-e-Avval. Folk style is very similar to the old style of the Tonbak players of the past, though this needs more research. Folk styles can be found in folk music of Kurdistan, Lorestan and Hormozgan, three provinces of Iran. Unfortunately the folk style is not considered an important style and has not been researched carefully.

Ostad Hosain Tehrani

Ostad Tehrani is considered as the father of modern style of Tonbak playing. He devoted his life to the promotion and development of the art of tonbak playing. Before his time, Tonbak was not considered as an independent instrument. He gathered motrebi and ruhozi rhythms, added many techniques to the art of tonbak playing and made many attractive pieces for tonbak. Also he established a Tonbak ensemble in Tehran and started performing in many places. He has trained many students. Major characteristic of his style is to mute the skin of tonbak, to play on the wooden part of the Tonbak and to use two rings of middle fingers of the two hands. His style is the most colorful. Today some tonbak players follow his style.

Ostad Nasser Farhangfar

Ostad Farhangfar has spent a great deal time in zourkhaneh during his youth and because of this his style is strongly based on the heroic and ancient style of tonbak-e-zourkhaneh. In this style there is no muting of the skin of tonbak or using the wooden body of tonbak. He has added some special techniques such as compound-pelang and chakkoshi. For more information please refer to Composed Rhythms of Ostad Nasser Farhangfar. Today many tonbak players follow his style.

Ostad Bahman Rajabi

Ostad Rajabi has added new techniques, which most of them can be found in his book. He has developed the techniques of the other masters of tonbak particularly Ostad Amir Naser Eftetah. The most important characteristic of his style is to develop rhythmical motifs. He has trained many students.

Glossary

Motrebi rhythms: Rhythms to be played by motrebs (musicians who play at wedding and other festive ceremonies).

Ruhozi rhythms: Motrebi rhythms.

Tasnif: This literally means “song”. It is a rhythmical composed piece for vocals and one or several instruments, which can be placed anywhere in a performance. Most of the traditional tasnifs are in 6 beats and almost always in slow tempo.

Tonbak: Persian goblet drum.

Tonbak-e-zourkhaneh: Persian large-sized goblet drum to be played in zourkhaneh for leading and encouraging the athletes.

Zourkhaneh: Zourkhaneh (that literally means the house of power) is a place for traditional Persian martial art. In zourkhaneh morshed (leader of athletes) plays on Tonbak-e-zourkhaneh (Persian large-sized goblet drum to be played in zourkhaneh) and sings heroic poets in order to encourage them. Recently, after the great morshed, Pahlavan Akbar Khorasani, Zang (a kind of bell to be played in zourkhaneh) has been used, though in the past it was only an ornamental instrument. Also we should add that in the past Ney (Persian knotgrass reed) had been played there.

Zarb or Tonbak (Persian Doumbek)

Lexical Discussion of the Different Names of the Tonbak (Zarb)

A Research for Different Names of Tonbak (Persian Goblet Drum)

An Article by Peyman Nasehpour

Abstract

There are many Persian Drums, but the tonbak is the chief percussion skinned instrument of Persian art music. In this article, I try to explain different names of the instrument and conclude that tonbak is the most suitable name for it.

Introduction

Tonbak is the chief percussion skinned instrument of Persian art music, though it is used in Persian folk music too. This instrument, after the great masters of tonbak especially the late Ostad Hossain Tehrani and the late Ostad Nasser Farhangfar has advanced in the last century and it has become more popular [Z, p179]. Through the history it has been applied different names for this instrument but the two names, tonbak and zarb have been used more than the others. In this article by explanation of the different names of the instrument I try to get this result that tonbak is the most suitable name for it.

Explanation for Different Names of Tonbak

Zarb

On the whole applying the word zarb for this instrument is error allowed by usage. If we refer to different Persian dictionaries, we will find many meanings for this word that one of them is zadan (to play). By taking its different meanings into consideration perhaps we deduce that since the act of playing is done on this instrument, in other words, with a view to the fact that it is played on, so it has been named zarb; then immediately the question arises, setar (Persian long-necked lute, with 4 strings, 25-28 movable frets and wooden body) that is also an instrument and is played on, why it is not called zarb!

Zarb that has been applied for this instrument of music, is apparently on this occasion that osul-e-zarb va ahang (rhythm) is underpinned to by this instrument [Saj, p9] and this justification is closer to fact. In order to complete this justification it should be stated that the job of tonbak players, as an accompanist, is to underpin to the composition to be performed by the soloist, though occasionally tonbak players perform tonbak solo after the great maestro, Hossein Tehrani.

Dombalag

Dombalag was one of the current instruments during the time of Khosro Parviz (the famous king of Iran in the period of Sassanide) and it was a small drum, the old form of dombak [Dehkhoda dictionary]. Dombalag is Pahlavi (an ancient Persian language) name of this instrument and the oldest text that its name has been mentioned, is a Pahlavi text named Khosro va Gholam [Se, p294]. Also Dr. M. Forough in one of his works has mentioned that in the period of Sassanide, a kind of percussion instrument that it is similar to tonbak of today has been called donbalak or dombalak and both are Pahlavi words and maybe donbak and dombak are transformation of the words [R, p15]. It is good to know that dombarak is another dialect of dombalak [B, p128]. At the end it should be mentioned that in Persian language the pronunciation of the letter “n” is altered to “m” when the letter “n” in a word, comes before the letter “b” without existing any letter between them, so e.g. tonbak is pronounced tombak.

Khorazhak

Though khorazhak has been taken into consideration as an Indian elliptical drum [Sac], but the first part of the word, khor, comes from the word, khordan, in the concept of zadan (to play) and esabat kardan (to hit) and this concept can be perceived in the meaning of zarb (tonbak) [B, p128].

Tabang

Different Persian dictionaries such as Borhan-e-Ghate’, Anjoman-e-Ara’, Rashidi and Anend Raj have mentioned that the meaning of the tabang is tonbak. Also the Persian poet, Suzani, has mentioned to this word as a percussion instrument. Dr. M. Mo’in in his dictionary mentions to this point that from the explanation of Anend Raj, it arises that tonbak and donbak are altered forms of tabang.

Khonbak

Khonbak is a kind of percussion skinned instrument that it is played by hands. In these days it is called tonbak or donbak and transformation of “kh” to “t” and “d” is common in Persian language [Anend Raj dictionary]. The famous poet, Nezami, has mentioned to this word in his works. Also it is good to know that khom is abbreviation of the word khonb and it is a kind of barrel for keeping water, vinegar, wine and so on in; khom also means a big kous (kettledrum) [M, p12]. So it is obvious that khomak and khonbak have the same root and both mean tonbak.

Tonbak

In Persian texts they been applied different names for this instrument but it is obvious that the two names, tonbak and zarb, have been used more than the others. There is an interesting opinion about the word tonbak; tonb means belly and tonbour (a very ancient Persian long-necked lute) means owner of belly. Perhaps the words, tonbak and tonbour, have the same root [Sh, p144]. At the end it should be mentioned that the name of this instrument in Lorestan prov. (west of Iran) and Hormozgan prov. (south of Iran) is tombak and tompak respectively [BD, p127 & p133].

Conculsion

Now that we are acquainted with different names of this instrument, the name tonbak seems to be more suitable than the others. Also there is another justification for the name tonbak, in this way that, some people believe the name of this instrument comes from its sound, for if we play on tonbak in the centre of its skin by the cushions of the fingers, then we will hear a sound like ton and if we play on tonbak at the side of its skin by the cushions of the two, middle and ring fingers, then we will hear a sound like bak.

Acknowledgment

The author wishes to thank Prof. Sayyed Abd-Allah Anwar and Ms. Ferdos Navabi for their helpful advice.

References

[B]: Binesh, M.T., Shenakht-e-Musighi-ye-Iran, Tehran, 1997.
[BD]: Boustan, B., & Darvishi, M.R., Morouri bar Musighi-ye-Sonnati va Mahalli-ye-Iran, Tehran, 1991.
[M]: Mojarrad, M.I., Chaghane-ye-Tarab, Amouzesh-e-Tombak, Tehran, 1970.
[R]: Rajabi, B., Tonbak va Negareshi be Ritm az Zavaya-ye-Mokhtalef, Tehran, 1977.
[Sac]: Sachs, C., The History of Musical Instruments, New York, 1940.
[Saj]: Sajjadi, Z., Bahs-e-Loghavi, Amouzesh-e-Tombak, Tehran, 1990.
[Sh]: Shoushtari, M.A.E., Iran, Gahvare-ye-Danesh va Honar, Tehran, 1969.
[Z]: Zonis, E., Musighi-ye-Kelasik-e-Irani, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1973 (Translated from English to Persian by M. Pour Mohammad).

Note

All references are in Persian language except [Sac].

Are Drums Unladylike?

In Iran and some other countries, it is believed that some drums are unladylike without offering any reason! Not only this is the duty of girls and women to start drumming, but also boys and men should encourage them to drum!

Also it is promoted that frame drums are very ladylike. Then I hope this will not cause people to think that the other kinds of drums are unladylike.

As a male drummer, I believe that drums are not unladylike and I have some female students that if they continue drumming, they will become a good tonbak (Persian goblet drum) player.

I searched in many different books to find a female tonbak player’s photo and the only that I found is the following photo:

I have listened to Rimpa Shiv female tabla player of India and student and daughter of Swapan Shiv. She is one of the rare female tabla players that has proved the incorrectness of the general belief that tabla playing is unladylike.

Female musicians (drummers and percussionists):

Pamela Lynn: Lady Freestyle Hand Percussionist and Professional Drum Facilitator

Drum Cafe – Drumming in Nordhorn, Germany (djembe, percussion and drum circle) run by Anna Ölerich and Roswitha Bült and info and support by Rosi and Heinz – Jürgen Burrichter. Please be aware that they are different from DrumCafe Germany, but in contact with them.

Lori Cotler: Vocal Percussionist!

Venus Rising: Female Percussion and Dance Ensemble for West African Music

Drumocracy (Drumming for Freedom): Tanya Schur believes that D.R.U.M means devotion, respect, unity and music. She quotes a nice sentence from the late Babatunde Olatunji – father of the rythmaculture movement: “When people drum together, the world is a better place.” Do check out her green and lovely website!

Born to Drum: To provide a positive environment for women to learn, to teach, and to perform drumming arts from diverse cultures

Terri Lyne Carrington: World-renowned drummer, composer, producer and clinician

Jeni Swerdlow: Drum mm… Empowering communities through rhythm and play, featuring interactive, facilitated drum circles.

Ellen Clegg (Facilitator/Percussionist, FOUND SOUNDS: Community Through Rhythm)

Lilian Friedberg is a performing artist/drummer/writer/translator with European, Jewish and Ojibway ancestors, living in Chicago, where she is a djembe instructor and Artistic Director of the Chicago Djembe Project.

Sheila E: My goal in life is to bless just one person a day. If today that one person is you then I have done my job by telling my short story.

Cat Lake: Cat is a female percussionist based in the New Forest, Hampshire, UK. Her website is very well-designed. She is founder of an online community for Bodhrán players – formerly Bodhranii – now a part of Paul Marshall’s bodojo project. For more info about her check her website!

Amazones Woman Master Drummers of Guinea

Mwt Shekemet – The African American Experience in Folklore

Sevinj Sariyeva (Mugam Singer and Ghaval Player) is one of the best female ghaval players that I have seen in my life. In singing she is the student of Arif Babayev that is a very great singer in Azerbaijan.

Layne Redmond a drum sister of mine and a very famous US frame drummer.

Marla Leigh: Multi-percussionist (frame drums, Indian tabla and so on…), flautist, educator and composer based in LA/USA.

Judy Piazza: founder of Resonance & Rhythms and a female multi-instrumentalist.

The African Music Encyclopedia is a very nice website by female djembe player, Janet Planet. Her Drumminfun site has a very good drum links. She has some other websites: DrumCafe.com and DrumCafe.org and is the moderator of some drumming discussion groups powered by Yahoo! Groups that you will find them in her sites.

Drummer Girl: A very good list of many women who drum. Many female drummers have been listed there.

Susie Ibarra is an NY-based female drummer and composer. She has worked with people like David Ware, John Zorn, Derek Bailey and so on…

Anuradha Pal a female Indian tabla player and a famous student of the late Ustad Alla Rakha Khan.

Monette Marino African, Cuban, Brazilizn and Korean Drumming

Evelyn Glennie UK based female drummer. Her site is really nice.

Alessandra Belloni a female drummer of Italy. An exploration of the music of southern Italy, with performance listings, audio samples, drums. Her site has been designed by my friend Chris Sampson (percussionist and web-designer).

Dr. Judith R. Cohen: performer and ethnomusicologist specializing in Judeo-Spanish (“Ladino”) Sephardic songs, as well as in medieval and traditional music, including Balkan, Portuguese, Yiddish, and French Canadian. Her daughter, Tamar Ilana Cohen Adams (born in 1986) often performs with her, on voice, recorders and percussion.

Simone LaDrumma: Group and Private Lessons, Drum Circles and Parties, Programs for Children. Simone, this nice female drummer, has been drumming professionally since 1987.

Female Mugham Singer with Ghaval in AZER.com

Safiya, Khafif’s second drummer, primarily plays doumbek, and occasionally tar and zils. Safiya is also an artist, librarian, and researcher.

Jacqui MacMillan: Washington D.C. based female drummer. She is a very active percussionist and she has a nice website.

This page has been created on 8/03/2003 for the remembrance of International Woman’s Day (somehow related to women’s rights!). If you know any good site related to female drummers, then please email me. Thanks for your help.

Jennifer Quirino (A Very Great Double Bass Player)

Arab Music in Khuzestan Province of Iran (Persia)

By Peyman Nasehpour

Though there is no doubt about the antiquity of music in Khuzestan province of Iran (Persia), but it is very unfortunate that its history is still in dispute. There is a stonecutting piece in the very ancient city Shush (the capital of Elamis) that shows three musicians playing a kind of frame drum and two harps. Also there is a pre-Christianity clay statue belonging to Khuzestan showing a semi-naked long necked lute player.

And the name of an ancient melody, i.e. Hoveyzavi attributed to Hoveyzeh, the capital of Moshashaians shows the existence of a genre of music in that period of Khuzestan. In the period of Sheikh Khazal, not only he was used to hire local musicians, but also he has been inviting Arab musicians from Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt to play in his palace.

After the revolution in 1979 and with the help of some researchers of regional music in Iran, different genres of folk music of Iran have been promoted and gradually people have been acquainted with folk music of Iran. But the folk music of Khuzestan is still unknown and I hope this short article will help to the promotion of this important and special genre of music among those people who are interested in oriental music.

Music of Khuzestan can be divided into three different genres.

Magham Music: This is a genre of music played in cities and is very much related to Iraqi Magham music. The antiquity of this genre of music goes back to Abbasid period and the existence of Persian names such as Esfahan and Nahavand shows the impact of Persian music on this genre of Arabic music in Iraq and Khuzestan province of Iran. The instruments used in this genre of music are:

Santoor: This is a kind of hammered dulcimer that is played in Iran, Iraq, Egypt and India.

Kamancheh: This is a kind of spike fiddle of Persian origin. Rubab and violin are the bowed instruments that are used in Khuzestani music too.

Kasoureh: This is a very special goblet shaped drum and smaller than ordinary tonbak (Persian goblet drum). For fast tempo pieces of compositions, kasoureh is used, while for slow tempo pieces, the tonbak is used. Sometimes they are used both.

Zanjari: This is a frame drum that its jingles are metallic plates (called tashtak).

Two famous maghams in Khuzestani magham music are: Maval and Fasih.

Radif Music (Not to be confused with Persian Radif Music): A genre of music played in villages. And every kind of this music is called “tor” and every “tor” may have its own accent and poems. The instruments played in this genre of music are:

Rubab: A kind of bowed instrument

Almatbag: A kind of short double reed that is used accompanying chubiyeh vocal music. Chubiyeh music is in fact a kind of dance music that tonbak and a big drum are used too. Chubiyeh vocal/dance music is also popular in Iraq, Syria and Jordan.

Alvaniyeh Music: This is the music of Arabs of Khuzestan. It is a special genre of music played by a singer/musician that sings using ethic and heroic poems and plays rubab. Alvaniyeh music founded in the end of 1950s by a very famous singer Alvan in Khuzestan was promoted by Alvan in many villages. Since in Alvaniyeh music, the singer mentions to the poets of the poems, therefore the name of many unknown poets have not been forgotten, particularly in villages that poor poets have not been able to publish their books of their works. Therefore not only Alvaniyeh music helped to the richness of the Khuzestani music, but also it helped to the promotion of the folk literature of the area. This genre of music has become popular in Southern parts of Iraq too.

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Remark: The main reference of this article is a short but informative article written by Mr. Sayed Mohammad Mavali in Hamshahri Newspaper, Feb. 15th, 2000.

Persian Dance

General Info about Dances of Iran

By Peyman Nasehpour

Dance is to move rhythmically to music. In every age and among every race dancing has existed either as recreation or as a religious manifestation in the world. Persian term for dance is ‘bazi’ though bazi literally means game, playing and sport. There are some expressions that they contain the word bazi in this meaning.

Here are some examples:

Pay-bazi: It literally means foot-dance. This expression has been mentioned in a pre-Islamic manuscript, named Khosro-va-Gholam. The other pre-Islamic Persian expression for dance is ‘vachik’. Hafiz, the very famous Persian poet, has mentioned to this name once in his works too that I bring its translation here:

Dishevel Thy tress; and, to mystic dancing, bring the Sufi,
That, from every patch of his ragged garment, thousands of idols, Thou mayst scatter.

Chub-bazi: It literally means wood-dance. Please refer to Raghs-e-Chub.

Shamshir-bazi: It literally means sword dance.

The term ‘raghs’ (also spelled as ‘raqs’) is the most popular term for dance in today Persian language.
Hafiz, the very famous Persian poet, has mentioned in his works to the word ‘raghs’ eight times and I bring the translation of two beautiful verses of his poems.
Last night, when with the intention of dancing, my idol stood up,
From the tress, she unloosed the knot; and on the hearts of beloved ones beat.
To sweet song, and to the reed’s voice sweet is the dance:
Especially, that dance wherein, an idol’s hand, they take.

Here are some examples:

Raghs-e-Baluchi: Baluchistani Dance

Raghs-e-Pa: Dance to be based on movements of feet. This dance can be seen in zourkhaneh (Persian ancient gymnasium). Zourkahneh literally means house of power.

Raghs-e-Do-Pa: A kind of Kurdish and Lorestani dance.

Raghs-e-Se-Pa: A kind of Kurdish and Lorestani dance.

Raghs-e-Jalajel: Dance with tightening the jingles around the hands or the feet of dancer.

Raghs-e-Charpareh or Raghs-e-Chalpareh: A kind of dancing.

Raghs-e-Chep-chep: Dance with chalap. Chalap is a kind of cymbal that is played in mourning ceremonies. Its smaller size is played in festive ceremonies. Another names of Chalap are Chalab, Senj, Zang, and Tal. Tal is Indo-Persian name of cymbal.

Raghs-e-chubi or Raghs-e-chupi: A kind of dancing consist of at least two dancers that they beat wooden sticks to mark the rhythm. This kind of dancing can be found in Romania also.

Raghs-e-Halat: Dance of Sufis.

Raghs-Khaneh: Place for dancing. Khaneh literally means house and home.

Raghs-e-Darvishan: Dance of Dervishes.

Raghs-s-Shateri: Famous popular dance to be based on movements of bakers while they are cooking bread in bakeries.

Raghs-e-Shotori: Dance to be based on movements of camel.

Raghs-e-Shekam: A kind of dancing very popular in Egypt. It is called belly dance and in Iran it is called Arabic dance.

Raghs-e-Sheikhi: A kind of Persian folk dance in suburb of Iranshahr city.

Raghs-e-Arefan: Dance of Sufis.

Raghs-e-Ammi: Opposite of Raghs-e-Arefan. It is a kind of dance that has not a sophisticated aim.

Raghs-e-Ghasemabadi: A kind of Persian folk dance of Ghasemabad region to be located in North of Iran, Gilan province, showing the weeding of farmers.

Raghs-e-Kachul: A kind of dance to be mentioned in Persian literature.

Raghs-e-Torki: It literally means Turkish dance. But it is used for denoting the Azerbaijani folk dance. The most famous Azerbaijani dance is Lezgi. The other is diringi. Diringi is a light rhythm for dance music, though it is found in vocal music also. It is played in both low and high tempo, depending on the occasion of the performance. Diringi can be considered the same as Persian Reng. Reng is the principal dance form in Radif music. It can be improvised or composed, performed by one or more instruments. A reng usually occurs towards the end of a radif performance. Some famous rengs are included in the radif repertoire, while others have been composed later. It is almost always in 6 beats and medium tempo.
There is another interesting term for dance in Persian language.

Dast-Afshan: It literally means hand scattering. (Afshan is suffix and it literally means scattered.) But dast-afshan means dancing. In this meaning this word has been mentioned by Abd-al-Ghader-e-Maraghi in his books on Persian music. The expression dast-afshani-va-pay-kubi is for dance particularly Sufism dance.

Sama

Sama literally means a joyful song and comes from the Arabic word, sam that means to listen, but Sama’ at whole means song (avaz), ecstasy (vajd) and dance (pay-kubi and dast-afshani) with its special rules and orders. Sama-o-raghs means the Sufism dance.

A Brief About Ghajar Dance

Raghs-e-ba-zang (dance with castanets): The dancer wears two couple of small metallic bowl-shaped castanets. One is for thumb finger and the other for middle finger. The dancer marks the rhythm by striking them together. The history of this kind of dancing goes back to pre-Islamic ages.

Raghs-e-ba-Gilas (dancing with glass): Holding the glass with teeth in a way that the dancer bends from the back and the liquid of the glass should not be dropped.
Moallagh-zadan: To turn a somersault. Some dancers were turning a somersault during their dance performances.

Raghs-ba-Sham’dan: Sham’dan literally means candlestick. The dancer during the dance does the acrobatic movements and the lightened candle should not be blown out.

Raghs-e-Ard: Ard literally means flour. Some dancers were spreading the flour on the floor of the stage and by dancing on the tiptoes they were drawing a design or writing someone’s name on the stage.

Female Dancers of Ghajar Period (Raghghaseh-ha-ye-Doreh-ye-Ghajar)
In the Ghajar period there were some famous female dancers who are mentioned in some historical books. The following are the name of these dancers:

Arus was specialist is raghs-e-chep-chep.

Akhtar-zangi was a good dancer and her name shows that she was skillful in raghs-e-ba-zang.

Zahra-ye-Ahad was a good dancer and specialist in using zang-e-riz (small zang) and since her father’s name was Ahad she was titled to Zahra-ye-Ahad.
Galin was a good singer and dancer and the conductor of a group. Some of her students are: Malus, Jalis, Turan and Sedigheh.

Gohar was a good dancer and sister of Mashallah who was male dancer and kamancheh (Persian spike fiddle) player.

Munes was a good dancer and her sister, Anis, was a good tasnifkhan and dayereh (Persian frame drum) player.

Ghazal and Maral were both good dancers.

Ghamar-e-Saleki was a good dancer and tasnifkhan.

Heshmat was specialist in acrobatic movements such as Mo’allagh-zadan.

Monavvar-e-Shirazi was specialist in raghs-e-ard.

References:

[KH]: Ruhollah Khaleghi, Sargozasht-e-Musighi-ye-Iran, Tehran, 1974.
[N]: Peyman Nasehpour, Personal Interview with Ostad Dadashi (Master of Azerbaijani Dance), 1992.
[S]: Mehdi Setayeshgar, Vazhe-Name-ye-Musighi-ye-Iran Zamin, Tehran, Vol. I (1995) & Vol. II (1996).

Farzaneh Kaboli is a very famous Iranian Choreographer, Dance Artist and Actress.

Djanbazian Dance

History of Mathematics, Iranian (Persian) Mathematics

Persian or Arabic Mathematics!

A short note by Peyman Nasehpour

Before I start criticizing to the great works of two Scottish mathematicians who have worked on the history of mathematics, I congratulate for their works and I express that I have tried to seek for reality and there in no place for nationalism in my critics.

The question is that why most of the Iranian (Persian) scholars in the history are considered as Arabs. For example while Khayyam is considered as a Persian poet, he is introduced as an Arab mathematician!

Iran is a big country that different nations live beside each other and some of them are Arab too, but they live in Kuzestan, a southern province of Iran. Also we should not forget that in the past Iran (Persian Empire) was bigger and after different separations, Iran has become smaller.

This is right that many of those scholars have written their works in Arabic (the international scientific language among people of that time), but this should not cause us to think that they have been Arab. Today most of the scholars write in English, then should we consider them American for instance?

Though it is wonderful that the two esteemed mathematicians have started publishing some great articles about the contribution of Iranian mathematicians in the history of mathematics in Internet, but it is surprisingly strange that why they have categorized it as Arabic, the mathematics that has been nurtured and flourished by these great mathematicians, most of them non-Arab mathematicians!

The title of this great article is “Arabic mathematics: forgotten brilliance?” and then they start their article by this passage that “recent research paints a new picture of the debt that we owe to Arabic/Islamic mathematics. Certainly many of the ideas which were previously thought to have been brilliant new conceptions due to European mathematicians of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are now known to have been developed by Arabic/Islamic mathematicians around four centuries earlier. In many respects the mathematics studied today is far closer in style to that of the Arabic/Islamic contribution than to that of the Greeks.”

Again the question is why Arabic/Islamic contribution?

And this passage becomes more interesting when they add that “there is a widely held view that, after a brilliant period for mathematics when the Greeks laid the foundations for modern mathematics, there was a period of stagnation before the Europeans took over where the Greeks left off at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The common perception of the period of 1000 years or so between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance is that little happened in the world of mathematics except that some Arabic translations of Greek texts were made which preserved the Greek learning so that it was available to the Europeans at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

That such views should be generally held is of no surprise. Many leading historians of mathematics have contributed to the perception by either omitting any mention of Arabic/Islamic mathematics in the historical development of the subject or with statements such as that made by Duhem in [3]:-

… Arabic science only reproduced the teachings received from Greek science.”

And at the end when they want to describe the period that they want to discuss they write:

“Before we proceed it is worth trying to define the period that this article covers and give an overall description to cover the mathematicians who contributed. The period we cover is easy to describe: it stretches from the end of the eighth century to about the middle of the fifteenth century. Giving a description to cover the mathematicians who contributed, however, is much harder. The works [6] and [17] are on “Islamic mathematics”, similar to [1] which uses the title the “Muslim contribution to mathematics”. Other authors try the description “Arabic mathematics”, see for example [10] and [11]. However, certainly not all the mathematicians we wish to include were Muslims; some were Jews, some Christians, some of other faiths. Nor were all these mathematicians Arabs, but for convenience we will call our topic “Arab mathematics”.”

The inconvenience shows itself when they vividly express that “the regions from which the “Arab mathematicians” came was centred on Iran/Iraq but varied with military conquest during the period. At its greatest extent it stretched to the west through Turkey and North Africa to include most of Spain, and to the east as far as the borders of China.”

And when one refers to the biographies of these mathematicians understands that most of them have been from Persia (now Iran), so why those mathematicians must be considered as Arabs. And since Persians has had a very great and glorious culture and civilization in pre-Islamic ages, then why there is no mention to the probable influence of pre-Islamic Persian mathematics on “Persian mathematics from the end of the eighth century to about the middle of the fifteenth century”!

And at the end, despite of this critic to their work, I consider their works very useful for the history of mathematics, since thanks to the great efforts of these specialists of the history of mathematics, today we know that what they did was not just a reproduction of the works of Greeks!

References:

Arabic Mathematics: forgotten brilliance?

List of Iranian (Persian) Mathematicians

Noruz, The Persian New Year

Noruz — that is a Persian name and literally means New Day — begins on the vernal equinox and lasts 13 days. Noruz is a the most important Persian celebration that celebrates life, happiness, health, prosperity and the abundance of nature.

Prior to the celebration, families clean their homes, bake pastries and plant seeds and bulbs to grow new plants as a sign of renewal. They set ceremonial tables decorated with seven symbolic items — haft-seen — each beginning with the Persian letter seen “s”.

During the celebration, people visit friends and family, share gifts and enjoy a feast. At the end of the celebration, on the morning of the 13th day — sizda-be-dar — friends and relatives gather for a picnic at a park to show appreciation for nature.

Iran (Persia), the Country of Lion and Sun

In a number of important ways, Iran is the ‘odd man out’ in the Middle East. First, it was an imperial power in ancient times. The first Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great, found it in 550 B.C.

Second, Iran differs ethnically its immediate neighbors. The Iranians are not semantic, nor do they belong to the family of Turkic peoples. They are, as the name of their country indicates, of Aryan origin.

Third, Iranians speak a language, which is different from that of most of their immediate neighbors. Indeed, the term ‘Aryan’ is used more often these days to denote a language family than a family of peoples. Modern Persian and its cognate Iranian languages and dialects, together with the Indian languages like Hindi and Bengali, which stem from Sanskrit, derive from a common Indo-Iranian parent language. By contrast, the other principal languages spoken in the Middle East, Arabic and Turkish, belong to quite different language families.

After the advent of Islam, Arabic replaced Pahlavi, the Middle Persian language used by Persians during the Sasanid period. For some five centuries, the majority of the works written by Persians in the field of theology, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, philology, mathematics and even history, were written in Arabic. The reason is simple. Until the downfall of the caliphate in 1258, the Iranian world was part of the Islamic empire, and Arabic was the ‘lingua franca’ of that empire from Spain and Morocco to South-East Asia.

The Iranian Contribution Literature and Science:

Each of these subjects needs a separate chapter in a book, but we only give a brief outline here.

There was an intimate alliance between Persian mysticism and Persian literature. The ecstasy of the soul with the Creator has never been more beautifully expressed that in the very famous work of Jalal-al-Din Rumi. Ranking close to him in sublimity are Farid-al-Din Attar and Hafiz-e-Shirazi, who brought allegorical mystical expression to its highest pitch of refinement.
Other poets, of whom Umar Khayyam is the best known (though his principal claim to fame is as a mathematician, and without the genius of Fitzgerald it is doubtful whether he would have obtained much renown in the West), reveal another strain, which is characteristic of the Persian mind.

The part played by Persia in the development of Islamic science again needs no introduction. In the pre-Mongol period at least three names stand out: Kharazmi who gave us the words algorithm and algebra; Umar Khayyam (the famous Persian astronomer-mathematician-poet) who classified the forms of cubic equations, is the creator of the Jalali Calendar and contributor to Non-Euclidean Geometry and at last Biruni who did pioneering work in empirical physics.

The Persian contribution to medicine consisted of advances in treatment rather than diagnosis. Persia led the world in pharmacy. Without question, the greatest Persian physician and one of the greatest physicians of the medieval world, was Razi who discovered alcohol, known to the West as Rhazes. His chief encyclopedic Hawi, became a standard tesxtbook in European universities.

From the book The World of Islam, the Article Land of the Lion and the Sun by Roger M. Savory

Some points about the words Iran, Iranian, Persia, Persian, Fars and Farsi

By Peyman Nasehpour

From the beginning of the history, we have called ourselves, Iran. Native English speakers have called our homeland Persia and have called us Persians for centuries. It seems this has been started by Greeks and has been continued by Romans and other Europeans. This means that the words, Persia and Persian can be found in the oldest English texts. In 1789, Sir William Jones used the word Iranian in English to explain about different branches of Persian languages in the family of Indo-European languages.

In 1930s, the Government of Iran (Reza Shah) decided to do something for the confusion between the words Persia and Iran and wanted the world to call our country Iran not Persia and after that we became The Kingdom of Iran and now we are The Islamic Republic of Iran.

Now the United Nations and all countries know us as Iran with the abbreviation, IRN (our official websites are like this: domain.ir)

But this is not the end of the story. This never ended to the use of the word, Persia in newspapers and magazines. In fact the confusion between Iran and Persia still exists.

Fortunately the meaning of Persia is clear like before. It is the land of Fine Arts! Yet people love Persian famous poets such as Rumi, Hafiz, Sadi and Khayyam. But the meaning of Iran is still in dispute! Is Iran the same as Iraq? Are Iranians Arab and is their language Arabic?

Of course Iran is not Iraq! Most of Iraqi people speak in Arabic. But the formal language of Iranians is Persian, though we have Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs in Iran.

According to this background, the following suggestions are offered:

What is official or governmental should be translated to Iran and Iranian. Some examples are: The Iranian Government or Government of Iran, Iranian President or President of Iran.

What is related to culture, civilization and art should be translated to Persia or Persian. Some examples are: Persian art music, Persian carpets, Persian rugs, Persian painting, Persian calligraphy, Classical music of Persia etc

It is better not to use Iranian language. Persian language is much better. Not all Iranians speak in Persian. Almost one third of Iranians are Azerbaijani (Azeri) that they speak in Azerbaijani language that is a branch of Turkish language. Azerbaijani language has lots of Persian and Arabic words but its grammar is totally different from the grammar of Persian language. Here I would like to mention that Persian and Azerbaijani music are very similar to each other in the way that we can say they are almost the same.

Recently some medias use Arabic Gulf or even Gulf instead of Persian Gulf. This is not right! According to all historiocal/geographical documents and UN directives, the name of this waterway that separates Persia (Iran) from Saudi Arabia is the ‘PERSIAN GULF‘.

Recently, Americans use the word Farsi for Persian language that we do not like this. This is right that we Iranians use the word Farsi for our language, but this is quite unknown for the rest of the world and will increase the confusion. The word Farsi is arabicized of the word Parsi and Parsi means Persian.

In some cases that our text is historical, then we may use the words Persia and Persian in our translations instead of Iran and Iranian in order to show the antiquity of the text.

From this useful book:

Iran & Iranian in English, Kamran Safaeian, BAZ publications, 2001.

Call for Peace: No War in Iran

To desire peace, to have freedom, justice and democracy, to respect to human rights, to wish for the happiness of one’s family, to seek secure and safe life, these are all the shared sentiments of people everywhere.

And the most important question is:

Can wars bring all these shared sentiments?

The human being’s historical experience shows that the answer is clearly negative.

And yet, human history has been stained without cease by the horror of war and meaningless suffering. Despite the bitter lessons of millennia of bloods and tears, humanity remains unable to free itself from the shackles of folly and hatred.

There is no parent anywhere who does not grieve at the death of a child in war.

So the following question rises:

How, then, can we transform enmity to empathy, conflict to coexistence?

The only answer that I always find is: to respect our cultures and civilizations, to learn from each other, to understand our common sentiments and spread the love among all nations. Therefore, it depends on every culture’s ambassadors (particularly artists) how to promote peace, love, mutual respect and understanding.

We are all from the Earth. This is what it is materialized in the following poems of great Persian poet, Sa’di, who says:

The children of Adam are limbs of each other
Having been created of one essence.
When the calamity of time afflicts one limb
The other limbs cannot remain at rest.
If thou hast no sympathy for the troubles of others
Thou art unworthy to be called by the name of a man.

Wars are disasters! Don’t beat the drums of wars! It is really dangerous!

War is caused by people. It is, therefore, up to people whether or not they create a peaceful world. Let’s have a peaceful life for ourselves, our children and the next generations!

By Peyman Nasehpour

An Open Letter from Peyman Nasehpour to all Musicians of Iran (Persia)

Saturday, 12 March 2005

Music has three dimensions: 1) Melody 2) Rhythm 3) Accent. Since skin headed percussion instruments are the main instruments for performing rhythmic cycles, consideration of the percussion instruments of Iran (Persia) has special importance. Because of cultural varieties in Persian music, we have a lot of different percussion instruments in Iran. It is not possible to discuss all of them here so this letter will be about the “tonbak” and the “daf”, the only national drums of Iran.

According to organology, tonbak is considered as a member of the goblet-shaped drum family. Similar drums are the “darbouka”, played in Arabic countries and Turkey, and the “zirbaghali” in Afghanistan. The antiquity of tonbak with its “Pahlavi” (Persian pre-Islamic language) name, “dombalak” goes back to pre-Islamic ages and according to the late Dr. Moeen, “dombak” is a transformed form of this ancient name. The Tonbak has progressed in recent decades and it is thought of as a solo and independent instrument. This progress is in debt to the pure efforts of valuable masters of the tonbak, and among them, the role of the late maestro Hosain Tehrani is so important that he can be labeled as the father of modern tonbak. Even though this instrument has progressed so much and it is used broadly in different genres of Persian music, unfortunately it is not taken to be as important as it should be. For example one cannot receive his bachelor’s degree in music as a tonbak player, while on the other hand choosing instruments such as “tar”, “setar”, “kamancheh”, etc., she/he can.

According to organology, “daf” is considered as a member of the frame drum family. Similar drums are the “ghaval”, “riq” and “bendir” in neighbor countries of Iran. The antiquity of “daf” with the Pahlavi name, “dap”, goes back to pre-Islamic ages and “daf” is an arabicized form of “dap”. The “daf”, which was played in Sufi gatherings, now is played broadly in all genres of Persian music. And according to the view of Mohammad Reza Darvishi (esteemed researcher of Persian regional music), “daf” should be considered a national drum the same as tonbak. When the tonbak with its status is not considered as important as it should be, then guess what happens to the “daf” as well as the other percussion instruments of Iran.

According to what it was said in the above, the following suggestions are offered:

A new major of music in the universities should be created in the way that one can receive a bachelor’s degree in percussion music as a tonbak or daf player.

International percussion festivals should be performed in Iran with a focus on Persian percussion instruments.
An independent committee for percussion instruments should be created in the most famous Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) for Persian music, called “Iran House of Music”.

Remark: Perhaps harmony can be considered another dimension in western music, but this open letter discusses about Persian music.

Acknowledgments: The writer of the letter wishes to thank Mr. Grant Smith for his useful pieces of advice about the translation of the letter from Persian to English.

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The letter in Persian was originally published at the online daily magazine for music, harmonytalk.com

Impact of Persian Music on Flamenco Music

Zaryab, the Persian musician

The impact of Persian music on other cultures have been discussed on the following article of Maestro Nasrollah Nasehpoor in details:

Impact of Persian music on other cultures and vice versa

In this short note we like to mention of the impact of Persian music on flamenco music. It is famous that the musician, “Zaryab”, Persian style, also spelled as Zyriab, Zorab, Kurdish style, Ziryab, Arabic style (some name him as Abolhasan Ali Ebn Nafe) immigrated to Cordoba in Spain and established a music school and conveyed the music that he learnt from his master, Eshaq Museli. And since the music that his master offered was the music strongly affected by Persian music, we can imagine why we can talk about the impact of Persian music on Flamenco music.

Etymology of Zaryab

Zaryab comes from the combination of the two words “zar” (Persian word, literally means gold) and “yab” (comes from the Persian verb “yaftan”, literally means to find) and therefore “zaryab” literally means gold-finder.

Point: Some believe that he was entitled as ziryab, an Arabic word that is the name of a special bird.

Originality of Zaryab

While some believe that he is African, possibly a Zang of Tanzania, some researchers believe that he is a Persian Kurd.

Zaryab Immigration

It is said that Zaryab immigrated from Baghdad of Iraq to Syria, sometime after the death of Caliph Al-Amin, then to Tunisia and then Andalusia because of the invitation of Hakim, Umayyad prince.

The signs of the impact of Persian music on Flamenco music:

If one listens to Flamenco music can easily feel the similarity of flamenco vocal music with Persian music.

Guitar

Etymology of guitar: the word guitar seems to be the combination of the two words “guit” that may have its origin in the word “sangeet” that in sanskrit it means music and dance and “tar” that means chord and string. Actually many instruments in Persia (Iran) and India and other places related to Persian culture contain the word “tar” such as Persian tar, Persian setar, Persian dotar, Indian sitar, Indian ektar and so on…

The antiquity of these long-necked instruments goes back to at least 2000-1500 BC, the shape of these instruments found in some statues found in Susa of Iran, kept in National Museum of Iran.

The structure of guitar is quite similar to Persian tar and the big hole on the sound-box of the guitar shows the influence of ud (or barbat). Therefore one may consider guitar as the fusion of the two instruments ud and tar.

Article by Peyman Nasehpour

Traditional music therapy in Iran (Persia)

Traditional music therapy in Iran (Persia)

Gwat: Gwat literally means wind. Gwati is a kind of mental illness. A Gwati person is not mentally balanced. The melody is for dancing and their actions and figures are monotonous. After doing these monotonous actions and figures the dancers go to the world of ecstasy. The name of the conductor of gwat ceremonies is gwati-mat. The text of this melody is the praise of Lal Shahbaz Ghalandar and Sheikh Abd-al-Ghader Gilani. The ceremonies are continued during three to seven days. Every day the ceremonies are done from one to four hours. It is believed that after the seven days if the illness is not removed then she/he will die. This illness is for women more than men. Gwat melody can be considered a kind of traditional music therapy.

Damal: This illness is something like gwat but for men more than women. The conductor of the damal ceremonies is called khalifeh.

In both damal and gwat ceremonies all musical instruments especially sorud, tamburak and doholak can be used.

Maled: These are the ceremonies very similar to the ceremonies to be done in khanghah of ghaderi dervishes. The unusual actions are a part of the both ceremonies. Mastan is the name of those people that do the unusual actions. The melodies to be used in the ceremonies are used sometimes for music therapy also. The only musical instrument that is used in the ceremonies is sama (a kind of frame drum similar to daf).

Translated by Peyman Nasehpour

Impact of Persian Music on Other Cultures and Vice Versa

An Article by Maestro Nasrollah Nasehpoor

In order to examine Persian music, that of the neighboring countries should first be tackled, since the states which have either impressed our music or have been influenced by it have either been part of Iran in ancient times or just adjacent to it. Besides the relation between the neighboring countries, given that Iran was located in-between the east and west, the frequent crossings of various tribes left its impressions on Persian culture. The two issues needs to be examined closely. Though a thorough discussion of the issues in question won’t be possible here, but I will do my best to show such a mutual impact as far as possible.

Persian culture is one of the world’s most ancient. Given that no remarkable information and documents are available on its ancient era, nonetheless, on the basis of the existing evidences one might realize the existence of an integrated music in the ancient Persia. The oldest document is a cylindrical stamp dating back to the 5th millennium BC, which has been unearthed at Choghamish near Dezful city. It shows the world’s most ancient music ensemble, which is consisted of a harpist and a drummer.

On the other hand, Persian music might have been influenced by the Indian music, which might be linked to the music of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan. This is, nonetheless, nothing new and its evident sample is Abu Reyhan Birouni’s book titled “Mal ol-Hind”.

The impression left on Persian music by the Indian music since ancient times is quite evident from the common Aryan traditional music, among which the one with the well-known story about the Indian gypsies might be the most famous. It is said that Bahram Gour requested his father-in-law, who was India’s monarch, to send 12,000 musicians to Iran in order to entertain the Iranian nation by playing Indian music. The consequent impression left on Persian music has been talked about to some extent. The existence of such Indian musical instruments as “van” and “darai” in Iran marks the traces of Indian music. Besides coming across musical pieces such as Ramkali in Abu-Ata, Denasari in Homayoun, Rak-e-Abdollah, Rak-e-Hindi, Rak-e-Kashmir in Mahour and Rast-Panjgah are samples of such an impression. It should be clarified that Ramkali and Denasari are Indian Ragas (modes). Besides Rak is the Arabic version of Rag, which is somehow related to the Persian word Rang (color). The impression of Iranian music on the Indian music is still more evident, which is contributed to the presence of Iranian musicians specially Amir Khosro Dehlavi, the Indian Persian-speaking poet and the famous singer and musician at Akbar Shah’s court. Indian music of today is based on two styles known as Hindustani and Karnatic Sangeet. Hindustani style commonly played in northern India appeared under the impression of Iranian music. The Indian singing styles including Qavali, Ghazal, Tarana and so on are all rooted in Persian music. The Indian sitar is taken after the Persian setar, which has undergone some changes to produce the melodies suitable for Indian music. According to the latest research, the Indian “tabla” is rooted in three instruments including the Iranian “naghareh”, the Iranian/Indian “doholak” and the Indian “pakhavaj”. On the other hand the presence of the Iranian and Arabic words such as “saz” (instrument), “mezrab” (plectrum) denotes such an impression. Unfortunately, further elaboration in this respect would divert our attention from the original issue.

Given that China played a decisive role in the cultural and musical exchange, it should be mentioned as well. Several Iranian instruments, which were taken to China, were influenced by some characteristics of the Chinese music. For instance, the Chinese instrument known as “suona” is rooted in the “sorna” (Persian oboe) and is related to some extent to the “shahnay” (Indian oboe). Another such example is the Iranian “barbat” (Persian lute) that was taken to China and became known as “pipa”, which should have later been taken to Japan and the Japanese called it “biwa”. Another instrument quite resembling the Persian “tonbak” (goblet-shaped drum) called “shuhai-gata-katamen-taiko” is also commonly played in Japan, while the instrument played in Sistan-Baluchistan province of Iran, known as “binjo” is probably of Japanese origin.

It is interesting to note, however, that the culture of Uyghur Turks has been greatly impressed by the Persian culture and the presence of such Persian instruments as “tar”, “khoshtar”, “dap”, etc. is the best evidence. Uyghuri music is based on modal style and is comprised of 12 modes, which should be rooted in the well-known Iranian 12-modal.

Given that we already surveyed the common music of eastern Iran, let’s tackle that of western Iran. According to the surveys conducted so far by unknown researchers, it has been revealed that the Greek music is originally rooted in the Orient. Likewise, the Turkish music has so much in common with Persian music that they might hardly be considered independent from one another. Therefore, the Persian music should be taken as one of the basics of the Turkish music. For instance, the Greek goblet drum known as “toubeleki” which is from the same family as the Turkish instrument called “dumbelek”, should have been rooted in the Persian goblet drum known as “dombak”. “Dombalak” is a Pahlavi (middle Persian language) name which is a converted form of “dombak”. It should be noted, however, that once the Islamic Civilization prevailed, the use of Greek texts in theoretical music became common, which might be taken as the theoretical impression of the Greek music on the theoretical music of the world of Islam.

But what is more important is to discuss the music of Arabic-speaking countries. Everything that is related to the Islamic civilization has been attributed by some biased historians to the Arabs on the mere ground that they have been written in Arabic, while the share of Persians have either been ignored or rendered quite pale. The Islamic civilization is known to have been quite common in the world of Islam over 9th-11th centuries owing mostly to the committed attempts of the Iranian scholars. It should be mentioned that what is known today as the Arab music is rooted in the music of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia.

Once the governments ruling Assyria and Babylonia collapsed in the 6th century BC, the Mesopotamian and Persian civilizations were combined to form a single much richer civilization.

The Egyptian music is also impressed by Persian music. The presence of Persian instruments such as kamancheh (spike fiddle) and santoor (hammered dulcimer) as well as various Persian musical modes including chahargah, sehgah, Isfahan, Nahavand, souznak, rast, basteh-negar, souz-e del in the Egyptian music is the best evidence to this end. Besides the instrument known as hammered dulcimer, is also commonly played in China, India, Iraq, Hungary, Romania and Germany.

The western musical instruments are mostly rooted in or taken after the oriental ones. Almost all European instruments were taken to Europe by Muslims from Asia through the southeast of Byzantine and northern Africa in the Middle Ages. The Persian “barbat” known as “Al-oud” among the Arab states was called lute once it arrived in Europe. Later on, it underwent changes and was converted into guitar and mandolin. It should be clarified, however, that guitar is not quite unlike the Persian stringed instrument known as tar (literally means string) and that the occurrence of the word “tar” in guitar is not accidental.

It is already evident that the basics of piano should be looked for in dulcimer and that the Turkish and Arabic “sornas” have also been derived from similar Persian instruments. It should be noted that even the percussion instruments have mostly been taken to the West from the Orient. The French word “tabor” is proved to have been derived from the Persian word “tabireh”. “Tabor” was an instrument which was played in Europe in the Middle Ages. Besides the history of the western music shows that kettledrum known as “naker” is the father of its present version known as timpani. Naker is derived from the word “naghareh” which was taken to Europe through the Ottoman martial music. All types of frame and goblet drums are rooted in the Middle East. For instance, the north African instrument called “bendayer” also referred to as “bendir” is of the same root as the Persian frame drum known as “dayereh” which was taken to Spain and Portugal by Muslims, whence it was taken to Brazil and became known as “pandeiro”.

Let’s now survey the impression left on the Persian music by the western music over the recent two centuries. It can be definitely said that such an impression dates back to the Qajar era. Under the rule of Fathali Shah Qajar, once Iran’s ruling system and army was introduced to the new European system and the army was equipped with cannons and guns, the martial musical instruments – mainly played in naghareh-khanehs (special centers where naghreh were played) – were also replaced. Since then the naghareh-khanehs were replaced by new martial musical arrangements. In-between the two world wars, when Iran and the Tsarian Russia were apparently in good terms, the ambassador plenipotentiary representing the Russian government heading a delegation arrived in Tehran via Tabriz. A 30-member orchestra accompanying the visiting delegation performed tunes in Tabriz for the crown prince Abbas Mirza and for Fathali Shah who resided in Soltaniyeh, Zanjan for an indefinite period of time. Once Abbas Mirza heard the played tunes, he became inquisitive about their instruments and after getting enough information about them, he decided to form an orchestra of martial music according to the new style. This was the very time when the Persian music got impressed by the western music. Then a new department was added to Darol-Fonoun School, where modern martial music was to be taught in order to train experts of martial music. A music master called Loumer was employed. In 1918, a music school was established at the proposal of General Gholam-Reza Minbashiyan.

The book called “Western Theoretical Music” was translated into Persian for the first time ever by Mirza Ali Khan-e Naqqash-Bashi, known as Mozayanoddoleh, who used to teach French and painting at Darol-Fonoun. It was published at the school’s printing house. Piano was brought into Iran under the rule of Fathali Shah. Mohammad Sadeq Khan Sorour ol-Molk, the well-known santoor player, tuned it in accordance with Persian intervals for the very first time.

Violin is also one of the European instruments, which became common in Iran under the reign of Nassereddin Shah after the establishment of Darol-Fonoun. Then it was adopted by orchestras of Iran and taking it as a model, a fourth cord was added to the Persian spike fiddle, the kamancheh.

It should be noted, however, that Persian music gradually became more and more impressed by the western music, so that its traces are evident even in the most traditional type of today Persian music. The most significant cases of such impression might be summarized as follows:

- Devised forms of the late Qajar era such as “pish-daramad” (overture), etc.
- Singing and playing styles
- Various styles of performing in ensemble
- Imitation of western styles including martial music, waltz, polka, etc.
- Chamber and Symphonic orchestras
- Opera and ballet groups
- Music schools and western teaching methods
- Writing music and notes
- Survey and research on music

Since elaborating on all the above is out of question, some of the cases will just be briefly pointed out. At the music courses proposed by Salar Moazzez besides martial music, other branches of western music were also taught. Thus civil trainees were also attracted to the said music school.

In 1923 the Master-Course Music School was established under the supervision of Ali-Naqi Vaziri, who was trained on Persian music by Iranian masters. He also studied western music in Germany. Under the impression of western educational music books, Vaziri complied and published in Berlin his book on playing both European and Persian music with ‘tar’. He compiled a musical theory on the Persian music with a western outlook on the basis of which, for instance, the 24-part scale might be redesigned. Such a theory was earlier brought up and proposed for the oriental music by Michael Moshaqeh, the Arab mathematician. He meant to moderate the intervals of Persian music similar to the 12-part western scale so that they would correspond to rules of harmony.

As concerns formation of orchestras, one might recall the orchestra of Okhovvat Society, which was the first orchestra of Persian instruments formed under the impression of western music. The orchestra included such western instruments as violin and piano, which eventually led to the establishment of the orchestra of Vaziri’s music school.

The idea of initiating opera in Iran might have occurred to the mind of some Iranian artists around 70-80 years ago. In the outset of the constitution era, when stage performances became common, the idea of musical dramas also popped into the minds of the artists. As a matter of fact, the idea of operas and operettas was introduced by the Caucasian musicians residing in Iran. One may actually talk about writing harmonized melodies on the basis of Persian music.
The brief reference made above calls for multilateral survey in order to further introduce the connection of Persian music with the cultures of other states. Fortunately, dialogue among civilizations can assist researchers across the world, once the principles and the nations’ votes are respected.

Remark

This is an English version of the following article:

Nasrollah Nasehpoor, Impact of Persian Music on Other Cultures and Vice Versa, Art of Music — Cultural, Art & Social (Monthly), pp 4-6 (Vol. 37) Sep, 2002.

Hammered Dulcimers

The santoor (also spelled as santour and santur) is most likely of Persian origin. It is believed that “traveling musicians” spread the santoor across Europe and Asia.

Here are the names of hammered dulcimer of different countries.

Chinese Yang-Chin

Yang-Chin is Chinese hammered dulcimer.

Egyptian Santoor

Musical instruments of Egypt are so similar to Persian ones and even the names are the same. One of them is santoor.

German Hackbrett

The hackbrett is the German hammered dulcimer that is played in south of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Greek Santoori

Santoori is the name of Greek hammered dulcimer and it is so similar to Turkish santoor.

Hungarian Cimbalom

Hungarian hammered dulcimer is called Cimbalom or Zymbalon. The similar instrument is played in Romania.

Indian Santoor

Santoor in India was played in Kashmir area for Kashmiri music, particularly in Sufi style music. Later it was integrated into Indian classical music successfully. This is due to the great works of Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma.

Iraqi Santoor

Iraqi santoor is so similar to Persian one and it is played for accompanying Iraqi magham to be sung by the traditional vocalists.

Persian Santoor

The santoor is a three-octave wooden-hammered dulcimer with seventy-two strings, which are arranged on adjustable tuning pegs in eighteen quadruple sets, nine (bronze) in the low register, and nine (steel) in the middle register. The santoor can be made from various kinds of wood (walnut, rosewood, betel palm, etc.) depending on the desired sound quality. The front and the back of the instrument are connected by sound posts whose positions play an important role in the sound quality of the instrument. Although the santoor is very old, it was neither depicted in miniatures, nor presented in any other medium until the nineteenth century. The secret of making the trapezoid-shape sound box lies in the quality and age of the wood, as well as in the arrangement of the sound posts which connect the table of the instrument to its back.

Turkish Santoor

Known as santoor-e-torki, is the Turkish hammered dulcimer.

Hammered Dulcimer Discussion Group: This group is for all those instrumentalists interested in the hammered dulcimers.

Ostad Mehdi Nazemi, the most famous Iranian santoor maker

This trapezium made me crazy!

By Pooyan Nassehpoor

The great craftsman Mehdi Nãzemi, who developed the most reliable, scientific and effective method of making santoors, is the second child of his family among four brothers and two sisters.

His ID shows his birthday 1905, but a document written by his father shows his year of birth as 1910. These different dates arose because it was not usual to have a birth certificate in the Ghãjãr era.

Nãzemi says: “It was a local custom for rich families in Yazd that when a son was born in a family, a great party would be held. When my brother was born, among those invited to the celebration was an ensemble of the most famous singers and musicians of the region. They played instruments such as the santoor, tãr (Persian long necked lute), kamãnche (Persian spike fiddle) and arabãne (a kind of frame drum), and the famous singer Rezã Boland accompanied them. The santoor player of the ensemble, whose name was Gholãm-Hossein Naghãrechi, most strongly drew my attention. I was a nearly eight years old and hearing the sound of Santoor made me feel very happy. After the end of party I went to Gholãm-Hossein Khãn and asked him to give me a santoor, but I received only a smile. It was my first contact with the santoor and a santoor player”.

Barbat, the Persian lute

Barbat is one of the most ancient musical instruments of Persia. Its antiquity goes back to many centuries ago, to Ilamite era.

The name Barbat is probably originated in the name of the very famous Barbat player, ‘Barbad’, a musician living in Sassanid era, while some believe that Barbat is the combination of the two words ‘bar’ and ‘bat’ that they respectively mean chest and duck, since the structure of the rare of Barbat’s sound box together with the neck of the instrument is similar to the chest of duck.

The other and more popular name of this instrument is called oud (also spelled as ud). Oud (in the form of Al-Oud) that is the name used in Arab language countries, comes from the name of a special black wood used in the surface of the instrument, while some believe that oud is a dialect of the Persian name ‘roud’ originated in ‘roudeh’ that means gut. This seems to be more justifiable since the gut was used for making musical instruments’ strings and there are many similar names of musical instruments coming from ‘roud’ such as ’shesh-roud’ (means six-stringed) and so on…

It is believed that ‘pipa’, the Chinese lute, is originated in barbat and pipa goes to Japan and becomes ‘biwa’ and ‘Al-Oud’ goes to Europe and becomes the lute.

Anyway, though barbat was one of the most important musical instrument of Persia for both theory and practice (mentioned in every book on the theory of music and also poems of Persian poets), but it is not clear why during and after Safavid era up to some decades ago, it lost its popularity. One may consider that during and after Ghajar period, the most popular plucked instruments have been ‘tar’ and ’setar’.

Thanks to the efforts of the three last generation of musicians, bartat is becoming a little bit more popular.

Recently a very good website for Persian lute with the URL address www.iranianoud.com has become online. It has unique information about this Iranian instrument, its artists, makers and its history.

Kamancheh (Kamanche): The Persian Spike Fiddle

Kamancheh for sale

Kamancheh, the Persian bowed instrument

An article by Peyman Nasehpour

Abstract

Kamancheh is the chief Persian bowed instrument and is played both in Persian art and folk music. The aim of this article is to offer an introduction to this important Persian instrument.

Kamancheh before Ghajar Period

Kamancheh is an ancient instrument. According to different books that I have studied, Ebn-e-Faghih is the first who mentions to this instrument in 10th Century. Also some Persian poets such as Masoud-e-Sa’d, mentions to the name Kamancheh in his poems.

Allameh-Ghotb-al-Din Mohammad Shirazi, in his famous encyclopedia, Dorrat-al-Taj, mentions to this instrument by the name Komajeh that should be a dialect of Kamancheh. The very famous Azerbaijani musician/theorist/poet, Abd-al-Ghader Maraghi, describes this instrument in his famous book, Jame’-al-Alhan and says that the sound of Kamancheh is more beautiful than Ghezhak that is another Persian bowed instrument and today Ghezhak (with the name Gheychak) is played in Sistan-Baluchistan of Iran and is related to Indian sarangi.

In the book Kanz-al-Tohaf by Hassan Kashani that is maybe the only historical book on making Iranian instruments, it has been written about Kamancheh of that time and describes how to make a Kamancheh and its accessories. It is very interesting to notice that the author of the book mentions to this instrument with the name Gheshak (another dialect of Ghezhak). Maybe some object us what he describes is not the Kamancheh but fortunately he has painted the shape of Kamancheh in his book and it is wonderful that he mentions that bow (he calls it mezrab. I should mention that mezrab today is used for plectrum of Persian plucked instruments) of Gheshak is called Kamancheh. Etymologically it is better to say that Kamancheh is more suitable to mention to the bow of this bowed instrument than the instrument itself. The reason is that the word Kamancheh is the combination of the two words, Kaman that means bow and cheh is diminutive suffix in Persian language. Anyway, to apply Kamancheh for this Persian bowed instrument is error allowed by usage and it seems there is no better name to offer.

Another book the Behjat-al-Ruh, mentions to Kamancheh as a perfect instrument.

Fortunately there are some historical Persian paintings (called in the West as Persian miniatures) that show the Kamancheh.

Some famous Kamancheh masters of Iran before the Ghajar Period are: Mirza Mohammad Kamancheh’i, Ostad Ma’sum Kamancheh’i, Molana Ahmad Kamancheh’i entitled to Amir Ghazi, Ostad Zeytun, Malek Mahmud, the brother of the author of the famous book, Tarikh-e-Sistan.

Kamancheh in and after Ghajar Period

According to different books in Persian language, it seems Kamancheh had only two strings. Though we don’t know when the third string had been added to this instrument, but we know that in Ghajar period, Kamancheh had three strings.

Different books mention to the completion of this instrument. For example, one of the famous Kamancheh players of Ghajar Period, Agha Jan, the father of Mirza Habib Sama’ Hozur (very famous santoor and tonbak player) had invented a kind of Kamancheh that had strange strings and keys and it had a long handle and he was used to play that while standing up and he had named that Kamancheh, Majles-Ara!

Some famous Kamancheh players in and after Ghajar Period are: Khoshnavaz Khan, Agha Motalleb, Esmail Khan, Hossein Khan Esmail-zadeh, Gholi Khan, Musa Kashi, Mirza Rahim, Javad Khan Ghazvini, Bagher Khan Rameshgar, Alireza Changi, Mirza Gholamhossein, Safdar Khan, Hossein entitled to Karim-Kur and his daughter, Vajiheh, Farmanfarma the Uncle of Naser-al-Din Shah, Jamileh (the female student of Esmail Khan), Ali Khan, Reza Khan Nikfar, Hossein Yahaghghi and his sister Keshvar Khnum entitled to Farah-Lagha, Haig, and at last, Asghar Bahari.

According to some books that we brought some parts of them here, we see that Kamancheh was very popular and important in Persian art and folk music. After the introduction of Western violin to Iran, unfortunately everything changed! Though the forth string was added to Kamancheh after seeing that violin had four strings, but many instrumentalists put the Kamancheh down and started playing violin. It is interesting to mention that even most of the students of Hossein Khan Esmail-zadeh such as Reza Mahjubi, Rokn-al-Din Mokhtari, Abu-al-Hasan Saba, Ebrahim Mansuri and so on were violin player.

Please consider what Ruh-al-Allah Khaleghi, the famous historian/composer/theorist says about Kamancheh in his famous historical book, Sargozasht-e-Musighi-ye-Iran:

“The sound of Kamancheh is nasal, while the sound of violin is closer to nature! When the violin was brought to Iran, since it had four strings, another string was added to Kamancheh for imitating the violin and since it was very similar to Kamancheh, many Kamancheh players became violin instructors. Since violin was similar to Kamancheh, portable and its shape was more beautiful, therefore gradually replaced by Kamancheh and today nobody plays Kamancheh. It is always natural that the more complete instruments will be replaced by non-complete ones. Similarly flute was replaced by ney and oboe by sorna.”

Anyway, there were some compassionate artists such as Aref Ghazvini that was not happy for what was happening to Persian art music and warned about the danger of abolishing the Persian art music and its important instruments like Kamancheh, Santoor and Tar.

One day Hasan Mashhun, Persian art music researcher, asked from one of the most famous Kamancheh players of his time: “Why did you put down the Kamancheh? We have lots of violin players, but Kamancheh players, one after another, are becoming old and disabled.” That the master replied: “There is no student of Kamancheh. People have become modern and play violin!”

It is obvious that using western instruments instead of Iranian instruments is not necessarily a smart idea. As my ethno-musicologist friends tell me, there should be a difference between modernization and westernization. Violin is violin and Kamancheh is Kamancheh. It is clear that every instrument has its own value and there is no need to discuss about that more.

As historians mention, the late Asghar Bahari, gave a new life to Kamancheh by playing this instrument in many concerts and gatherings and radio and TV.

It is fortunate that today we have many Kamancheh players in such a way that today there is no need to be anxious about being abolished the art of Kamancheh playing.

The picture of the late Asghar Bahari in this article appeared in Jean During’s book, The Art of Persian Music, page 114.

More info at Parham Nassehpoor’s kamancheh page

Setar, the Persian four-stringed long necked lute

Setar is one of the most favorite musical instruments of Persia (Iran). As its names shows, it had three strings. “Se” and “Tar” in Persian language respectively means three and string. But in the beginning of Ghajar Period (19th century) a famous dervish setar player, Moshtagh Ali Shah, added the fourth string to have more melodic colors and tunes.

In historical texts for Persian music, many authors and poets have mentioned to its name and describe it as a three-stringed tanbour. Tanbour is a very ancient long necked lute of Persia and it seems its ancient name has been tambour in pre-Islamic ages.

Setar’s sound is not as loud as the other instruments such as kamancheh, santoor and tar and therefore some love to listen to the sound of setar in the silence of nights.

Setar’s sound box is wooden with some holes on its surface. It is played with the nail of the index finger.

The similarities between Persian setar and Indian sitar, shows that their root should be the same and many Indians believe that sitar’s ancestor is the setar and Amir Khosro Dehlavi, the very famous Indian musician-poet who was originally from Persia, made some changes to make it more appropriate for Indian music.

Famous setar makers of the past: Ostad Haj Taher and Ostad Eshghi

Famous setar players of the past: Mirza Abdollah and his son Ostad Ebadi, Ostad Abolhasan Saba, Ostad Saeed Hormozi, Ostad Yousef Foroutan and so on…

Unfortunately there is a very good setar player that his name is Moshir Moazzam Afshar that he was from Shiraz city and is not famous at all.

More info at Parham Nassehpoor’s website

Persian Musical Instruments: Tar, Setar, Barbat, Kamancheh, Gheychak, Santoor, Ghanoon, Ney, Tonbak, Daf

Persian music instruments for sale

TAR

Tar is a plucked stringed instrument (a long-necked lute) that is played in Iran (Persia), Caucasian countries (like Azerbaijan, Armenia and so on) and central Asia (like Tajikistan). It exists in two forms now, the Persian (that is named Tar-e-Shiraaz or Irani) and Caucasian (that is named Tar-e-Ghafghaaz). The Persian tar is carved from a block of mulberry wood and has a deep, curved body with two bulges shaped like a figure 8. The upper surface is shaped like two hearts of different sizes, joined at the points. The sound box consists of two parts. The small part is called Naghaareh and the large part is called Kaasseh (that means bowl (sound box)). The sound box is covered with lambskin. On the lower skin, a horn bridge supports six metal strings in three courses. The long fingerboard has twenty-two to twenty-eight movable gut frets. The strings are plucked with a brass plectrum coated on one side in wax. Its range is about two and a half octaves.

SETAR

The setar is the Persian long-necked lute and is made from thin mulberry wood and its fingerboard has twenty-five or twenty-six movable gut frets. Setar is literally translated as three strings. However, in its present form, it has four strings and it is suspected that setar initially had only three strings and the forth string has been added by Moshtagh Ali Shah. It is believed that setar is the ancestor of the Indian sitar.

BARBAT (UD, OUD)

The barbat, in Arabic courtiers and Iran known as the ud, is a short-necked fretless lute with five double-courses of strings and traditionally played with an eagle’s quill. The barbat is the ancestor of the European lute, and functions as a bass instrument. The barbat is the ancestor of the Chinese pipa too. The pipa brought to Japan and was named biwa.

KAMANCHEH (KAMANCHE)

The kamancheh is the Persian spike fiddle and dates back to antiquity. It has a small, hollowed hardwood body with a thin stretched skin-membrane. Its neck is cylindrical, and it has four strings. It is played vertically in the manner of the European viol. It is suspected that the fourth string was added in the early twentieth century as the result of the introduction of western violin to Iran. The kamancheh has been painted in Persian antique paintings.

GHEYCHAK

The gheychak is a bowed fiddle of the Persian folk music played in the southeastern region of Iran. There are two large holes on the upper side near the fingerboard and one on the lower tip, which is covered with a skin membrane. There are four main strings and eight to sixteen sympathetic strings, which have been eliminated in the context of Persian art music. The sound box resembles an upside-down anchor, which is carved from a tree trunk and is placed vertically on the player’s lap. The upper and lower sections are separated by two oval indentations on the right and left side, which give the gheychak a distinct nasal sound. The other instruments of Indian subcontinent such as sarangi, saringda, esraj and dilruba.

SANTOOR (SANTUR, SANTOUR)

The santoor is a three-octave wooden-hammered dulcimer with seventy-two strings, which are arranged on adjustable tuning pegs in eighteen quadruple sets, nine (bronze) in the low register, and nine (steel) in the middle register. The santoor can be made from various kinds of wood (walnut, rosewood, betel palm, etc.) depending on the desired sound quality. The front and the back of the instrument are connected by sound posts whose positions play an important role in the sound quality of the instrument. Although the santoor is very old, it was neither depicted in miniatures, nor presented in any other medium until the nineteenth century. The secret of making the trapezoid-shape sound box lies in the quality and age of the wood, as well as in the arrangement of the sound posts which connect the table of the instrument to its back. Santoor is played in India, Iraq, Egypt and some other countries.

GHANOON

The ghanoon is the Persian zither. It is a flat trapezoidal wooden box, with twenty-four strings in triple fastened at its rectangular side on one end and to pegs on the oblique side on the other. The player to make slight changes in pitch manipulates small levels lying below each course of strings. The strings are plucked with two horn plectra, one on each index finger.

NEY

The ney that is the Persian knotgrass reed, has five finger holes in front and one thumbhole in the back. The ney has a range of two and a half octaves. The upper end is covered by a short brass cylinder, which is anchored in the tiny space between the upper incisive of the player. Sound is produced when a stream of air is directed by the tongue toward the opening of the instrument. In this way, sound is produced behind the upper teeth, inside the mouth, which gives the ney a distinct timbre than that of the sound produced by the lips on the outside of the mouth.

TONBAK

The most popular percussion instrument in Persian music today is a goblet drum known as the Tonbak. The Tonbak is a large wooden instrument with a goatskin head. Unlike other goblet drums, this drum has a much more squared-off shape and produces lower-pitched and softer tones due to its size and skin being put on with less tension. Other names for this drum are Donbak, Tombak, Dombak, Tompak and Zarb. Maybe the name Zarb has its origins in the Arabic word darb, meaning to strike, as mentioned above. The other names have a more interesting origin. The two main strokes played on this drum are known as Ton, for a bass tone played in the center of the drum head, and Bak, for a treble tone played on or near the rim. Combining the terms results in the name Ton-Bak. It is highly likely that the American name Dumbek is derived from one of the Persian names.

DAF

Daf is one of the most ancient frame drums in Asia and North Africa. As a Persian instrument, in 20th century, it is considered as a Sufi instrument to be played in Khanghah-s during Zikr ceremony. Daf has recently become very popular and it has been integrated into Persian music successfully.

Ostad Mirza Agha Ghosi, the great master of daf

Ostad Mirza Agha Ghosi, outstanding daf player and master of Sufi vocals, was born in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province of Iran, 1928. He learned the art of daf playing and Sufi vocals during his teenage from his father Haji Ghosi and later Darvish Karim. He was appointed Khalife (spritual leader) by Sheikh Abdolkarim Kasnazani of Kirkuk, a city in Kurdistan of Iraq. He was one of the oldest daf players of Iran and he had a very nice vocals. He performed in many festivals in Iran, France, Colombia, Turkey, Panama, Peru and Ecuador. In the famous Avignon Festival, he was entitled to “Rare Bird”. He passed away on July 17, 2007.

Iranian Vocalist and Master of Persian Vocal Radif, Ostad Nasrollah Nasehpoor

Official Website

A recognized master of the vocal radif repertoire of Persian art music, Maestro Nasrollah Nassehpoor, was born in Ardebil, Iran, 1940.

Since his father, the late Agha Shakour, was garman (Azerbaijani organ similar to European accordion) player, he was acquainted with Azerbaijani music through his childhood.

When he moved to Tehran, he studied vocal radif with the late Maestro Mahmoud Karimi for many years. He also studied instrumental radif repertoire of Persian art music at the National Music Institute with the late Maestro Ali Akbar Khan Shahnazi (A very skillful tar player).

In the class of the late Maestro Soleiman Amir Ghasemi (vocalist), he got in touch with the late Maestro Saeed Hormozi (A very skillful setar player) and he learned many important points of Persian art music.

At last he worked with the great master of vocal radif repertoire, the late Maestro Abdollah Davami, who had a great influence on his musical development.

Maestro Nasehpoor’s vocal’s unique timbre, which has coupled with his creative talent and rich Azerbaijani musical background, makes him an outstanding performer. He has researched, taught and performed about 50 years and has nearly trained 4000 students that some of them are famous vocalists in Iran and abroad.

Recently as a member of the chief committee board for the biggest Iranian NGO of music, House of Music, he has been socially very active in defending the rights of musicians and also promoting Persian classical music.

As a professor of the Art University of Tehran, his books on old theoretical music of Persia are under publication.

Interview of Aftab News with Nasrollah Nasehpoor

Impact of Persian Music on Other Cultures and Vice Versa: An Article by Nasrollah Nasehpoor

Nasrollah Nasehpoor in Press

Biographie

Biographie von Peyman Nasehpour auf Deutsch

Geboren 1974 in Teheran (Iran)

Durch seine Familie wurde er schon in sehr jungen Jahren in die aserbaidschanische und persische Musik eingeführt.

Er besuchte die “Child Music Course” und studierte dort die Theorie der alten persischen Musik.

Mit 9 Jahren begann er “Tonbak” (Persische Kelchtrommel) und “Ghaval“ (azerbaijanische Rahmentrommel) zu spielen. Darüber hinaus beschäftigte er sich auch mit dem Instrument “Daf” Diese kulturellen Einflüsse vermischt mit seinem akademischen mathematischen Studium haben einen hervorragenden Tonbakspieler aus ihm gemacht.

1997 und 1999 beendete er seine Ausbildung mit dem Bachelor’s und dem Master’s Degrees in Mathematik.

Seit 1997 beschäftigt er sich auch mit der indischen Tabla.

Er hatte viele Bühnenauftritte mit seinem Vater (Maestro Nasrollah Nasehpoor) und anderen berühmten Musikern.

Persische Musik hat in Peyman’s Familie große Tradition.

Email: nasehpour at gmail.com

handynummer: 0049 (0)176 54 53 18 92

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