Kayhan Kalhor
Kayhan Kalhor is an Iranian Kamancheh player and master of classical Kurdish and Iranian traditional music. Kayhan Kalhor was born in Tehran to a Kurdish family, he began studying music at the age of seven. By the age of thirteen, he was playing in the National Orchestra of Television of Iran. Continuing his music studies under various teachers, he studied in the Persian radif tradition and travelled to study in the northern part of Khorasan province, where music traditions have Kurdish and Turkic influences as well as Persian. At a musical conservatory in Tehran, while aged around 20 years, Kalhor worked under the directorship of Mohammad-Reza Lotfi, from the north-east of Iran. Kalhor travelled in the northwestern provinces of Iran, he moved to Rome and Ottawa, Canada to study European classical music. He is a graduate of the music program at Carleton University in Ottawa. Kayhan Kalhor has a wide range of musical influences, uses several musical instruments, crosses cultural borders with his work, but at his center he is an intense player of the Kamancheh.
In his playing Kalhor pins Iranian classical music structures to the rich folk modes and melodies of the Kurdish tradition of Iran. Kalhor has composed works for and played alongside the famous Iranian vocalists Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri, he has composed and performed with the Indian sitar player Shujaat Husain Khan and Indian tabla player Swapan Chaudhuri in the group Ghazal. Kalhor's 2004 album In the mirror of the Sky was a joint venture with the Kurdish Iranian lute player Ali Akbar Moradi, his 2006 album The Wind is a collaboration with the Turkish baglama virtuoso Erdal Erzincan, with both Turkish and Persian pieces performed. At other times Kalhor has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project Ensemble in the USA and the Kronos Quartet. Kalhor now has been commercially successful in USA over the past decade. Two of his works were nominated for Grammy Awards in 2004. In 2010 Kalhor composed "I was there", based "on a melody attributed to Ziryab, a ninth-century Persian Kurdish musician", for a Maya Beiser concert.
This piece was performed by Kalhor alongside Maya Beiser, the renowned cellist Bassam Saba, an oud player, two percussionists, Glen Velez and Matt Kilmer. † Nominated for a Grammy Award § Won a Grammy Award Silk Road Project, Silk Road Ensemble Dastgah Music of Iran Kayhan Kalhor's website Kayhan Kalhor at AllMusic Video: Kayhan Kalhor speaking as an ensemble member of Silk Road Ensemble, December 2008, 13 min
Bağlama
The bağlama is a stringed musical instrument. It is sometimes referred to as the saz, it is sometimes referred to as the "cura", although the term "saz" refers to a family of plucked string instruments, long-necked lutes used in Ottoman classical music, Turkish folk music, Iranian music, Azerbaijani music, Kurdish music, Assyrian music, Armenian music and in parts of Syria and the Balkan countries. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "the terms'bağlama' and'saz' are used somewhat interchangeably in Turkey." Like the Western lute and the Middle-Eastern oud, it has a much longer neck. It can be played with a fingerpicking style known as şelpe. In the music of Greece the name baglamas is given to a related instrument; the Turkish settlement of Anatolia from the late eleventh century onward saw the introduction of a two-string Turkmen dutar, played in some areas of Turkey until recent times. The most used string folk instrument in Turkey, the bağlama has seven strings divided into courses of two and three.
It can be tuned in various ways and takes different names according to region and size: Bağlama, Divan Sazı, Bozuk, Çöğür, Kopuz Irızva, Tambura, etc. The cura is the smallest member of the bağlama family: larger than the cura is the tambura, tuned an octave lower; the Divan sazı, the largest instrument in the family, is tuned one octave lower still. A bağlama has three main parts, the bowl, made from mulberry wood or juniper, spruce or walnut, the spruce sound board and a neck of beech or juniper; the tuning pegs are known as burgu. Frets are tied to the sap with fishing line; the bağlama is played with a mızrap or tezene made from cherrywood bark or plastic. In some regions, it is played with the fingers in a style known as Şerpe. There are electric bağlamas, which can be connected to an amplifier; these can have either double pickups. The Azerbaijani saz was used by Ashiqs; the art of Azerbaijani Ashiqs combines poetry, storytelling and vocal and instrumental music into a traditional performance art.
This art is one of the symbols of Azerbaijani culture and considered an emblem of national identity and the guardian of Azerbaijani language and music. Characterized by the accompaniment of the kopuz, a stringed musical instrument, the classical repertoire of Azerbaijani Ashiqs includes 200 songs, 150 literary-musical compositions known as dastans, nearly 2,000 poems and numerous stories. Since 2009 the art of Azerbaijani Ashiqs has been inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity; the bağlama is a synthesis of historical musical instruments in Central Asia and pre-Turkish Anatolia. It is descended from the Turkic komuz; the kopuz, or komuz, differs from the bağlama in that it has a leather-covered body and two or three strings made of sheep gut, wolf gut, or horsehair. It has a fingerboard without frets. Bağlama translates as "something, tied up" a reference to the tied-on frets of the instrument; the word bağlama is first used in 18th-century texts. The French traveler Jean Benjamin de Laborde, who visited Turkey during that century, recorded that "the bağlama or tambura is in form like the cogur, but smaller."
He was referring to the smallest of the bağlama family, the cura. According to the historian Hammer, metal strings were first used on a type of komuz with a long fingerboard known as the kolca kopuz in 15th-century Anatolia; this was the first step in the emergence of the çöğür, a transitional instrument between the komuz and the bağlama. According to 17th-century writer Evliya Çelebi, the cogur was first made in the city of Kütahya in western Turkey. To take the strain of the metal strings the leather body was replaced with wood, the fingerboard was lengthened and frets were introduced. Instead of five hair strings there were now twelve metal strings arranged in four groups of three. Today, the cogur is smaller than a medium-size bağlama. There are three string groups, or courses, with strings double or tripled; these string groups can be tuned in a variety of ways, known as düzen. For the bağlama düzeni, the most common tuning, the courses are tuned from top downward, A-G-D; some other düzens are Kara Düzen, Misket Düzeni, Müstezat, Abdal Düzeni, Rast Düzeni.
Name Bağlama düzeni Bozuk düzen, kara düzen Misket düzeni Fa müstezat düzeni Abdal düzeni Zurna düzeni Do müstezat düzeni Aşık düzeni (La, Re, Mi The musical scale of the bağlama differs from that of many western instruments – such as the guitar – in that it features ratios that are close to quarter tones. The traditional ratios for bağlama frets are listed by Yalçın Tura: Fret 1: 18/17 Fret 2: 12/11 Fret 3: 9/8 Fret 4: 81/68 Fret 5: 27/22 Fret 6: 81/64 Fret 7: 4/3 Fret 8: 24/17 Fret 9: 16/11 Fret 10: 3/2 Fret 11: 27/17 Fret 12: 18/11 Fret 13: 27/16 Fret 14: 16/9 Fret 15: 32/17 Fret 16: 64/33 Fret 17: 2/1However, as confirmed by Okan Öztürk, instrument makers now set frets on the bağlama with the aid of fret calculators and tuners based on the 24-tone equal temperament. Asik Veysel Muharrem Ertaş Neşet Ertaş (1
Tar (Azerbaijani instrument)
The Azerbaijani tar and the skills related to this tradition play a significant role in shaping the cultural identity of Azerbaijanis. The Tar is a long-necked plucked lute, traditionally crafted and performed in communities throughout the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Iranian Azerbaijan region; the tar features alone or with other instruments in numerous traditional musical styles. It considered by many to be the country’s leading musical instrument. In 2012, the craftsmanship and performance art of the tar was added to the UNESCO's List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Tar makers transmit their skills to apprentices within the family. Craftsmanship begins with careful selection of materials for the instrument: mulberry wood for the body, nut wood for the neck, pear wood for the tuning pegs. Using various tools, crafters create a hollow body in the form of a figure eight, covered with the thin pericardium of an ox; the fretted neck is affixed, metal strings are added and the body is inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
Performers hold the instrument horizontally against the chest and pluck the strings with a plectrum, while using trills and a variety of techniques and strokes to add colour. Tar performance has an essential place in weddings and different social gatherings, festive events and public concerts. Players transmit their skills to young people within their community by word of mouth and demonstration, at educational musical institutions. In the second half of the 19th century in Azerbaijan tar undergone some renovation. One of the greatest musicians - performers on container Mirza Sadiq Asad introduced changes in traditional tar structure and form, increasing the number of its strings and bringing them up to 11. He, in addition, has changed the way the game on the container, raising tool with performer knees to his chest. New flowering of playing on the container begins in the 20th century. For example, the tar took the lead in the first Sheet orchestra of folk musical instruments, created in 1931 on the initiative of Uzeyir Hajibeyov and Muslim Magomayev largest Azerbaijani composers and public figures of the first half of the 20th century.
School of sheet music playing on national instruments based Uzeyir Hajibeyov, further expanded the technical and artistic possibilities of the packaging. In Azerbaijan music tar was used as a lead instrument in the so-called mugham trio of singers, which includes kamancha and daf; the tar, as a part of mugham trio and as a solo, to date, continues to play a crucial role in the art of mugam and popular in Azerbaijan. The tar is held horizantal to the player's chest, there held in position with the right hand by pushing its double-bowl shaped lower part to the chest. Playing the Tar commences by pulling the string using the plectrum held between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand; the strings, which are pulled by the right hand, make the sounds, the tunes come from pressing the relevant frets with the forefinger, middle finger and ring finger of the left hand. In order to ensure the full use of the capability and variety of a Tar, the player will use different plectrums, together with differing strokes and trill.
The range of tonality of the Tar covers two and one-half octaves. Music of Azerbaijan Mugam Craftsmanship and performance art of the Tar, a long-necked string musical instrument
Qanun (instrument)
The qanun, ganoun or kanoon is a string instrument played either solo, or more as part of an ensemble, in much of the Middle East, West Africa, Central Asia, southeastern regions of Europe. The name derives from the Arabic word qanun, meaning "rule, norm, principle", borrowed from the ancient Greek word and musical instrument κανών, which in Latin was called canon. Traditional and Classical musics executed on the qanun are based on Makamlar; as the historical relative of santur from the same geography, qanun is thought to trace its origins back to Assyria, where an ancestral homologue might have been used in Mesopotamian royal courts and religious ceremonies. The instrument today is a type of large zither with a thin trapezoidal soundboard, famous for its unique melodramatic sound. Arabic qanuns are constructed with five skin insets that support a single long bridge resting on five arching pillars, whereas the somewhat smaller Turkish qanuns are based on just four; this allows Arabic variants of the instrument to have more room for the installation of extreme bass and treble strings.
Kanuns manufactured in Turkey feature 26 courses of strings, with three strings per course in the case of all regional variants. Contemporary Levantine designs use Nylon or PVC strings that are stretched over the bridge poised on fish-skins as described on one end, attached to wooden tuning pegs at the other end. Ornamental sound holes called kafes are a critical component of what constitutes the accustomed timbre of qanun. However, they occupy different locations on the soundboard of Turkish kanuns compared to Arabic qanuns, may vary in shape and number depending on geography or personal taste; the dimensions of a Turkish kanun are 95 to 100 cm in length, 38 to 40 cm in width, 4 to 6 cm in height. In contrast, an Arabic qanun measures a bit larger. Qanun is played on the lap while sitting or squatting, or sometimes on trestle support, by plucking the strings with two tortoise-shell picks or with fingernails, has a standard range of three and a half octaves from A2 to E6 that can be extended down to F2 and up to G6 in the case of Arabic designs.
The instrument features special metallic levers or latches under each course called mandals. These small levers, which can be raised or lowered by the performer while the instrument is being played, serve to change the pitch of a particular course by altering effective string lengths. On the regular diatonically tuned qanun, mandal technology was first implemented, according to Turkish musicologist Rauf Yekta, some 30 years prior to his submission of his invited monograph on Turkish Music to the 1922 edition of Albert Lavignac's Encyclopédie de la Musique et Dictionnaire du Conservatoire. Levantine qanuns, prior to that time, remained rather inflexible and cumbersome to perform on, requiring the player to use the fingernail of the thumb to depress on the leftmost ends of the courses to achieve on-the-fly intervallic alterations. With the advent of electronic tuners some decades standardization of the placement of reference mandals on the qanun began. While Armenian kanuns now employ only equidistant half-tones and Arabic qanuns exact quarter-tones as a result, Turkish kanun-makers went so far as dividing the electroacoustically referenced equal-tempered semitone of 100 cents into 6 equal parts, yielding - for all intents and purposes - 72 equal divisions of the octave pitch resolution.
Not all pitches of 72-tone equal temperament are available on the Turkish kanun, since kanun-makers affix mandals that only accommodate modulations/transpositions popularly demanded by performers. This has subsequently lead to the familiar interrupted and irregular pattern of mandals on the Turkish kanun becoming a visual guide for players, in facilitating modal and intonational navigation on an instrument, ordinarily bereft of pitch markers; some kanun-makers may choose to divide the semitone distance from the nut of the lower registers into 7 parts instead for microtonal subtlety. Despite the mentioned discrepancies, hundreds of mandal configurations are at the player's disposal when performing on an ordinary Turkish kanun. On the other hand, the nowadays widespread application of equidistant 24-tones on Arabic and 72-tones on Turkish qanun models presents an ongoing source of controversy; this is in regards to how adequate such Eurocentric octave divisions are in faithfully reproducing the traditionally or classically understood fluid pitches and inflexions of Arabic music or Ottoman classical music scales.
Pitch measurement analyses of relevant audio recordings reveal that, equal temperaments based on bike-chained "multiples of twelve" are not compatible with authentic Middle Eastern performances. Alternative tuning approaches for the qanun thus exist. Turkish music theorist Ozan Yarman has proposed, for example, an academical 79-tone temperament for the expression within tolerable e
Classical kemençe
The classical kemenche or Armudî kemençe or Politiki lyra is a pear-shaped bowed instrument. It used by Greek immigrants from Asia Minor and in classical Ottoman music; the instrument was used earlier for popular music, such as early "Smyrna-Style" Rebetiko and played till nowadays. It has become the main bowed instrument of Ottoman classical music since the mid 19th century; the name Kemençe derives from the Persian Kamancheh, means "small bow". The name lyra derives from the name of the ancient Greek lyre and was used in medieval times, see Byzantine lyra, it is played in the downright position, by resting it between both knees or on one knee when sitting. It is always played "braccio", that is, with the tuning head uppermost; the kemenche bow is called the Greek term for bow. The strings are stopped by touching them by the side with the nails, like for many folk fiddles from Southeastern Europe to the Indian sub-continent, including the Indian sarangi, its pear-shaped body, elliptical pegbox and neck are fashioned from a single piece of wood.
Its sound-board has two D-shaped soundholes of some 4x3 cm 25 mm apart, the rounded side facing outwards. The bridge is placed between, one side resting on the face of the instrument and the other on the sound post. A small hole 3–4 mm in diameter is bored in the back, directly below the bridge, a ‘back channel’ begins from a triangular raised area, an extension of the neck, widens in the middle, ends in a point near the tailpiece to which the gut or metal strings are attached. There is no nut to equalize the vibrating lengths of the strings; the pegs, which are 14–15 cm long, form a triangle on the head, the middle string being 37–40 mm longer than the strings to either side of it. The vibrating lengths of the short strings are 25.5–26 cm. All the strings are of gut but the yegâh string is silver-wound. Today players may use synthetic racquet strings, aluminium-wound gut, synthetic silk or chromed steel violin strings; the head and back channel might be inlaid with ivory, mother-of-pearl or tortoise shell.
Some kemençes made for the palace or mansions by great makers such as Büyük İzmitli or Baron had their backs and the edges of the sound holes covered with such inlays with engraved and inlaid motifs. The Byzantine lyra was a pear-shaped bowed string instrument; the Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih was the first to describe the Byzantine lyra as a typical Byzantine instrument. Variations of the instrument exist through a vast area of the Mediterranean and the Balkans. Examples are the Bulgarian Gadulka, the Calabrian Lira in Italy, the lyra of Crete and the Dodecanese, the Lijerica of the Croatian Adriatic. Tamburi Cemil Bey Derya Türkan Sokratis Sinopoulos Labros Leontaridis İhsan Özgen Byzantine lyra Cretan lyra Gadulka Gudok Ghaychak Gusle Rebab Kamancheh Kobyz Rebec igil Byzaanchy Huqin Violin family Margaret J. Kartomi: On Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments. Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology, University of Chicago Press, 1990 The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments: Londra, 1984.
M. Nazmi Özalp: Türk Sanat Mûsikîsi Sazlarından Kemençe, tarihsiz. Laurence Picken: Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey, Londra, 1975. Rauf Yekta: Türk Musikisi, İstanbul, 1986. Kemençe Classical kemençe video
Jalal Zolfonun
Jalal Zulfonun (sometimes spelled or pronounced jalal zolfonon, Persian: جلال ذوالفنون, a musician, was a great Master of the setar, as well prominent composer in Iran and teacher of Persian music He has collaborated with Maurice Béjart in the mix of Iranian music and European Ballet dance. Between 1975 and 1980 he collaborated with Jean During on his acquaintance with Iranian music, he collaborated with the DELA MUNOT Deauville Institute in Brussels to introduce Iranian music to Western European countries. Jalal Zolfonoun performed concerts in 1994 to present Iranian music to the majority of humans in the world at the United Nations. Jalal Zolfonun was born in Abadeh, Fars and received his earliest musical training from his father, Habib Zoufonoun, his older brother, Mahmoud Zoufonoun on the tar. At the age of 13, Zolfonun enrolled the National School for Iranian Music to study musical theory and technique under Ruhollah Khaleghi and Musa Khan Maroufi. While he fell in love with setar, the instrument was not taken in those times.
He instead decided to study the tar, while learning the violin from his brother Mahmoud Zoufonoun. In 1967, Zolfonun was accepted into the faculty of the fine arts department of Tehran University, where he further studied the setar with Master Noor Ali Boroumand and Dariush Safvat. From on, he dedicated himself to the delicate instrument, he began combining the techniques of the older masters of setar with his own ingenuity and mystic sensitivity. For the first time, with Iran's leading classical singer Shahram Nazeri, he founded an ensemble composed of only setar players. In the 1980s, Zolfonoun and Nazeri's compositions were released in two best-seller albums, one of which, Gol-e Sadbarg, is the best selling album of classical Iranian music ever. At the same time, Zolfonun composed for the setar in mind, would prove one of the most expressive, while technically virtuosic, players of the instrument, he showed the power and versatility of the setar as an ensemble and solo instrument that could express the nuances of Persian traditional music in any setting.
Since Gol-e Sadbarg's success, the setar evolved from the least to the most popular instrument in Iran. Following the success of Gol-e Sadbarg, Zolfonun continued to record a number of other albums on which he is featured as lead soloist, composer and/or ensemble player with a number of well-known singers and musicians with whom he toured worldwide. Zolfonun wrote a seminal book, Setar Playing / Teaching Method, he lived in Iran, but toured outside in Europe, the US, Canada and Japan with his son, Soheil Zolfonoon, other musicians. Zolfonun died of heart disease on 18 March 2012 in Tehran. Gol-e Sadbarg with masters Shahram Nazeri, Reza Ghassemi & Bijan Kamkar Atashi Dar Neyestan with master Shahram Nazeri Parand Peyvand Kord Bayat Del Aavaa Pearl Beads Sheydaee Mystic Journey 18 Tasnif Jalal Zolfonun accompanied by daf from the album Sheydaee
Dariush Talai
Dariush Talai plays both the Tar and Setar. Born in 1953 in Iran, he studied Persian music with masters of the Radif, his teachers include Tar player Ali Akbar Shahnazi, Nur Ali Borumand with whom he studied radif and old compositions, as well as youssef Forutan and Abdollah Davami, with whom he studied Setar and vocal techniques and repertories. Master Talai taught at the University of Tehran, University of Sorbonne-Paris, University of Washington-Seattle and was awarded a number of major prizes for his contribution to Persian Art Music, his collaboration with artists such as Maurice Béjart, Carolyn Carlson, Michel Portal. 1978 Anthologie de la musique traditionnelle - Setar and Tar. 1980 Tradition classique France. SideA: Improvisation in Shur - SideB: Improvisation in Mahour. 1982 Trobada de music a de mediterrani Vol. 1, Face 1. 1983 Musique traditionnelle, Radio France. Cassette n°1: SideA Improvisation in Mahour. FaceB Improvisation in Shur. Cassette n°2: SideA Improvisation in Tchahargagh. SideB Improvisation, Tchaharmezrab Darvish khan.
1987 Dariush Talai: Tar and Setar. SideA Improvisation in Nava, Modulation in Shur. SideB Improvisation in Mahour. 1988 Le Târ et le Sétâr de Dariush Talai. 1991 Iran: Les Maîtres de la Musique Traditionnelle, France. Vol.1 Band 1 Improvisation in Avaz-e Bayat-e Esfahan. Band 2 Improvisation in Tchahargah. Vol3 Bands 1 to 4 Avaz-e Afshari - Bands 5 to end Dastgah-e Mahour. 1992 Performance of Radif of Mirza Abdollah on the Setar and the book "A new Approach to the Theory of Persian Art Music". 1992 Performance on Setar. In Shur, Bayet-e Esfahan and Segah. 1993 Concerti Digar. In Afshari and Mahour. 1993 Iran: Les Grands Interprètes - Tradition Classique de l'Iran II, Le Târ, France. The CD edition of the Record Ref. Harmonia Mundi No. 1031, listed above: Improvisation in Shur - Improvisation in Mahour. 1993 Performance of Radif of Mirza Ahdollah on the Setar in France Al Sur. Vol 1 Dastgah-e Shur, Avaz-e Bayat-e Kord Vol 2 Avaz-e Dashti, Avaz-e Bayat-e Esfahan, Dastgah-e Homayoun Vol 3 Dastgah-e Nava, Dastgah-e Segah, Avaz-e Afshari Vol 4 Dastgah-e Mahour, Avaz-e Bayat-e Tork Vol 5 Dastgah-e Tchahargah, Dastgah-e Rast-Panjgah 1997 Performance on Tar: Sayeh Roshan.
In Nava. 1998 Performance on Setar: Tchahargah. In Tchahargah. 1998 Dariush Talai en concert - Concert of Utrecht August 30, 1996, Al Sur.1-Sâyé roshan 2-Hekâyat1 3-Yorghé 4-Naghmé 5-Hekâyat2 6-Jamal 7-Khâb 8-Aqiq 9-Elam 10-Sahari 11-Lâbé 12-Koubé 13-Anjâm 14-Shâdegâni. 2004 Vocal Calligraphy - The art of classical Persian songDariush Talai, Tar - Ali Reza Ghorbani, Vocal - Djamchid Chemirani, Zarb Abou'Ata: 1-Pishdaramad 2-Daramad 3-Hejaz 4-Tasnif. Nasimeh sahar 5-Bayate Kord 6-Tasnif. Bahare delkash. Homayun: 1-Pishdaramad 2-Daramad 3-Chakavak 4-Bidad 5-Oj 6-Razavi 7-Tasnif. Jelve ye gol. 2005 Great mediterranean mastersDariush Talai and Setar 1-Dastgâh Mâhur 2-Dastgâh Navâ 3-Âvaz Esfehân 4-Dastgâh Shur 5-Dastgâh Segâh su
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