Castanets
Castanets known as clackers or palillos, are a percussion instrument, used in Spanish, Moorish, Italian, Sephardic and Portuguese music. In ancient Greece and ancient Rome there was a similar instrument called crotalum; the instrument consists of a pair of concave shells joined on one edge by a string. They are held in the hand and used to produce clicks for rhythmic accents or a ripping or rattling sound consisting of a rapid series of clicks, they are traditionally made of hardwood, although fibreglass is becoming popular. In practice a player uses two pairs of castanets. One pair is held in each hand, with the string hooked over the thumb and the castanets resting on the palm with the fingers bent over to support the other side; each pair will make a sound of a different pitch. The origins of the instrument are not known; the practice of clicking hand-held sticks together to accompany dancing is ancient, was practiced by both the Greeks and the Egyptians. In more modern times, the bones and spoons used in Minstrel show and jug band music can be considered forms of the castanet.
During the baroque period, castanets were featured prominently in dances. Composers like Jean-Baptiste Lully scored them for the music of dances which included Spaniards, Egyptians and Korybantes. In addition, they are scored for dances involving less pleasant characters such as demons and nightmares, their association with African dances is stated in the ballet Flore by Lully, "… les Africains inventeurs des danses de Castagnettes entrent d'un air plus gai …" A rare occasion where the accompanying instrument is given concertant solo status is Leonardo Balada's Concertino for Castanets and Orchestra Three Anecdotes. The "Conciertino für Kastagnetten und Orchester" by the German composer Helmut M. Timpelan, in cooperation with the castanet virtuoso, José de Udaeta, is another solo work for the instrument. See the tocatta festiva for castanets by Allan Stephenson. Sonia Amelio has performed her castanet arrangements as a concert soloist. In the late Ottoman Empire, köçeks not only danced but played percussion instruments a type of castanet known as the çarpare, which in times were replaced by metal cymbals called zills.
Castanets are sometimes referred to as clackers in the United States. Castanets are played by singers or dancers. Contrary to popular belief, castanets are not used in the flamenco dance, except for two specific forms: zambra and siguiriyas. In fact, Spanish folk dance "Sevillanas" is the style performed using castanet. Escuela bolera, a balletic dance form, is accompanied by castanets; the name is derived from the diminutive form of castaña, the Spanish word for chestnut, which they resemble. In Andalusia they are referred to as palillos instead, this is the name by which they are known in flamenco. Castanets were used to evoke a Spanish atmosphere in Carmen, they are found in the "Dance of the Seven Veils" from Richard Strauss' opera Salome and in Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser. An unusual variation on the standard castanets can be found in Darius Milhaud's Les Choëphores, which calls for castanets made of metal. Other uses include Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio espagnol, Ravel's Rapsodie espagnole, Francis Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in D minor and Karl Jenkins's Tangollen.
One can see Spanish influence in the music of Naples through the presence of castanets, as it was registered by Athanasius Kircher on his Tarantella Napoletana. When used in an orchestral or jug band setting, castanets are sometimes attached to a handle, or mounted to a base to form a pair of machine castanets; this makes them easier to play, but alters the sound for the machine castanets. It is possible to produce a roll on a pair of castanets in any of the three ways in which they are held; when held in the hand, they are bounced against the fingers and palm of the hand. For a machine castanet, a less satisfactory roll is obtained by rapid alternation of the two castanets with the fingers. Handle castanets were developed for use in orchestral music. A pair of castanets are fitted onto the end of a straight piece of wood allowing them to be played with a technique similar to that of the snare drum, they are very useful for producing a sustained roll loud rolls, on the instrument. Be My Baby, popular American Rock n Roll song by The Ronettes with prominent castanets Crotalum, was a kind of clapper/castanet used in religious dances by groups in ancient Greece.
Chácaras Krakebs Zills
Belly dance
Belly dance referred to as Arabic dance, is an Arabic expressive dance which originated in Egypt and that emphasizes complex movements of the torso. It has evolved to take many different forms depending on the country and region, both in costume and dance style; the term "belly dance" is a translation of the French term "danse du ventre", applied to the dance in the Victorian era, referred to Egyptian and Middle Eastern female dances. In Arabic, the dance is known as Raqs Baladi in Egyptian Arabic. Belly dance is a torso-driven dance, with an emphasis on articulations of the hips. Unlike many Western dance forms, the focus of the dance is on isolations of the torso muscles, rather than on movements of the limbs through space. Although some of these isolations appear similar to the isolations used in jazz ballet, they are sometimes driven differently and have a different feeling or emphasis. In common with most folk dances, there is no universal naming scheme for belly dance movements; some dancers and dance schools have developed their own naming schemes, but none of these is universally recognized.
Many of the movements characteristic of belly dance can be grouped into the following categories: Percussive movements: Staccato movements, most of the hips, used to punctuate the music or accent a beat. Typical movements in this group include hip drops, vertical hip rocks, outwards hip hits, hip lifts and hip twists. Percussive movements using other parts of the body can include lifts or drops of the ribcage and shoulder accents. Fluid movements: Flowing, sinuous movements in which the body is in continuous motion, used to interpret melodic lines and lyrical sections in the music, or modulated to express complex instrumental improvisations; these movements require a great deal of abdominal muscle control. Typical movements include horizontal and vertical figures of 8 or infinity loops with the hips, horizontal or tilting hip circles, undulations of the hips and abdomen; these basic shapes may be varied and embellished to create an infinite variety of complex, textured movements. Shimmies and vibrations: Small, continuous movements of the hips or ribcage, which create an impression of texture and depth of movement.
Shimmies are layered over other movements, are used to interpret rolls on the or riq or fast strumming of the oud or qanun. There are many types of varying in size and method of generation; some common shimmies include relaxed, up and down hip shimmies, straight-legged knee-driven shimmies, tiny hip vibrations, twisting hip shimmies, bouncing'earthquake' shimmies, relaxed shoulder or ribcage shimmies. In addition to these torso movements, dancers in many styles will use level changes, travelling steps and spins; the arms are used to frame and accentuate movements of the hips, for dramatic gestures, to create beautiful lines and shapes with the body in the more balletic, Westernised styles. Other movements may be used as occasional accents, such as low kicks and arabesques and head tosses. Belly dancing is believed to have had a long history in the Middle East, but reliable evidence about its origins is scarce, accounts of its history are highly speculative. Several Greek and Roman sources including Juvenal and Martial describe dancers from Asia Minor and Spain using undulating movements, playing castanets, sinking to the floor with "quivering thighs", descriptions that are suggestive of the movements that are today associated with belly dance.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, European travellers in the Middle East such as Edward Lane and Flaubert wrote extensively of the dancers they saw there, including the Awalim and Ghawazee of Egypt. In the Ottoman Empire belly dance was performed by both women in the Sultan's palace. Belly dance in the Middle East has two distinct social contexts: as a folk or social dance, as a performance art; as a social dance, belly dance is performed at celebrations and social gatherings by ordinary people, in their ordinary clothes. In more conservative or traditional societies, these events may be gender segregated, with separate parties where men and women dance separately. Professional dance performers were the Awalim, Köçekler; the Maazin sisters may have been the last authentic performers of Ghawazi dance in Egypt, with Khayreyya Maazin still teaching and performing as of 2009. In the modern era, professional performers are not considered to be respectable in the Middle East, there is a strong social stigma attached to female performers in particular, since they display their bodies in public, considered haram in Islam.
Many bellydancers work in Cairo. The modern Egyptian belly dance style are said to have originated in Cairo's nightclubs been used in Egyptian cinema. Many of the local dancers went on to appear in Egyptian films and had a great influence on the development of the Egyptian style and became famous like Samia Gamal and Taheyya Kariokka both of whom helped attract the eyes to Egyptian style worldwide. Egyptian belly dance is noted for its precise movements. Turkish belly dance is referred to in Turkey as Oryantal Dans, or simply'Oryantal'; the Turkish style of bellydance is lively and playful, with a greater outward projection of energy than the more contained Egyptian style. Turkish dancers are known for their energetic, athletic
Zurna
The zurna, is a wind instrument played in central Eurasia, western Asia and parts of North Africa. It is accompanied by a davul in Anatolian and Assyrian folk music; the zurna, like the kaval, is a woodwind instrument used to play folk music. The zurna is made from the hard wood of fruit trees such as plum or apricot. There are several different types of zurnas; the longest is the kaba zurna, used in western Turkey and Bulgaria, the shortest, which can be made of bone, is the zurna played in Messolonghi and other villages of Aetolia-Acarnania region in Greece. The zurna, a relative of oboe, is found everywhere where the common reed grows because it uses a short cylindrical reed, tied to a conical brass tube on one end, flattened to a narrow slit on the other end as source of sound, it requires high pressure to give any tone at all and when it does, it is constantly loud, high pitched and piercing. The need for high pressure makes it suitable for playing without stop using circular breathing. A small pacifier style disk that the lips may lean on helps the lip muscles that hold the high pressure air and recover during long non stop playing sessions.
The combination of constant volume and non stop playing makes zurna not suitable to emphasize rhythm. It has therefore been played invariably along with big drums that both provide the rhythm and the lower frequencies that bear further away than Zurnas loud high pitched sound, it has a cylindrical bore, a bell opening out in a parabolic curve, thus adapted to reflect the sound straight ahead. Because of its loud and directional sound as well as accompaniment by big drums, it has been played outdoors, during festive events such as weddings and public celebrations, it has been used to gather crowds in order to make official announcements. This use of zurna as a symbol of ruler power, developed to Janissary bands, to military music. Seven holes on the front, one thumb hole, provide a range of over one octave including some transposition, it is similar to the mizmar. Zurnas are used in the folk music of many countries in Iran, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Turkey, Bulgaria, Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and the other Caucasian countries, have now spread throughout India and Eastern Europe.
In the Slavic nations of the Balkans it is called zurla. The zurna is most the immediate predecessor of the European shawm, is related to the Chinese suona still used today in weddings and funeral music; the Japanese charumera, or charamera, traditionally associated with itinerant noodle vendors is a small zurna, its name derived from the Portuguese chirimiya. Few, if any, noodle vendors continue this tradition, those who do would use a loudspeaker playing a recorded charumera. Turkish lore says that Adam, moulded from clay, had no soul, it is said. According to a Turkmen legend, the devil played the main role in tuiduk invention. Borrowed from an unknown Proto-Indo-European source of Luwian, Sanskrit शृङ्, Latin cornū, English horn. By folk etymology, the name is derived from Persian "سرنای", composed of "سور" meaning "banquet, feast", نای meaning "reed, pipe"; the term is attested in the oldest Turkic records, as "suruna" in the 12th and 13th century Codex Cumanicus. Pku Zhaleika Duduk Ney Sorna Rhaita Suona Kangling Sopila Piffero Armenian Zurna, Duduk.com Janitschareninstrumente und Europa.
Memo G. Schachiner, MusicalConfrontations.com Zurna FAQ at wayback machine. Http://www.fromnorway.net/yaylas/zurna/zurna_faq.htm, Satilmis Yayla, 1996 Oslo, Norway
Lavta
The lavta is a plucked string instrument from Istanbul. It has a small body made of many ribs using carvel bending technique, looking like a small oud, gut strings like an oud but only 7 strings in 4 courses and tunable: A dd gg c'c', or sometimes A dd aa d'd'; the adjustable frets are tied bits of gut on the fingerboard, at the microtonal intervals of the makam system, a significant difference from both fretless oud and 12-frets to the octave laouto, making its fretboard more related to instruments like tanbur. The bridge has mustache-shaped ends; the fingerboard is flush with the soundboard, unvarnished, has a carved and inlaid rosette. Some lavta have a pegbox like others more like a guitar; the tuning pegs are shaped like those of the violin, with 3 on the right side and 4 on the left side of the open tuning head. Known as a lavta in Armenian occasionally called Politiko Laouto in Greek, is an instrument, popular in the early 20th century among the Greek and Armenian communities of Istanbul, but the Turkish community, it was one of the many instruments played by noted Turk Tanburi Cemil Bey.
It was replaced by the oud and survived until this day. From the 1980s there has been a revival of interest in this instrument, now you can find the lavta again both in Turkey and in Greece. Right hand technique is similar to an oud, with a long thin plectrum. Laouto Rud Shahrud Kobza Nautilauta http://www.atlasofpluckedinstruments.com/middle_east.htm
Bendir
The bendir is a wooden-framed frame drum of North Africa and Southwest Asia. The bendir is a traditional instrument, played throughout North Africa, as well as in Sufi ceremonies. In Turkish, the word bendir means "a big hand frame drum"; the bandir has a snare stretched across the head, which gives the tone a buzzing quality when the drum is struck with the fingers or palm. The drum is played in a vertical position. One holds the drum by looping the thumb of the non-dominant hand through a hole in the frame. Similar frame drums include the bodhrán of Ireland. Unlike the bendir, the tar does not have a snare on the back of the frame, the bodhrán is played with a beater. Bendir at Eckermann Drums Austria
Middle East
The Middle East is a transcontinental region centered on Western Asia and Egypt. Saudi Arabia is geographically the largest Middle Eastern nation; the corresponding adjective is Middle Eastern and the derived noun is Middle Easterner. The term has come into wider usage as a replacement of the term Near East beginning in the early 20th century. Arabs, Persians and Azeris constitute the largest ethnic groups in the region by population. Arabs constitute the largest ethnic group in the region by a clear margin. Indigenous minorities of the Middle East include Jews, Assyrians, Copts, Lurs, Samaritans, Shabaks and Zazas. European ethnic groups that form a diaspora in the region include Albanians, Circassians, Crimean Tatars, Franco-Levantines, Italo-Levantines. Among other migrant populations are Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Pashtuns and sub-Saharan Africans; the history of the Middle East dates back to ancient times, with the importance of the region being recognized for millennia. Several major religions have their origins in the Middle East, including Judaism and Islam.
The Middle East has a hot, arid climate, with several major rivers providing irrigation to support agriculture in limited areas such as the Nile Delta in Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates watersheds of Mesopotamia, most of what is known as the Fertile Crescent. Most of the countries that border the Persian Gulf have vast reserves of crude oil, with monarchs of the Arabian Peninsula in particular benefiting economically from petroleum exports; the term "Middle East" may have originated in the 1850s in the British India Office. However, it became more known when American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan used the term in 1902 to "designate the area between Arabia and India". During this time the British and Russian Empires were vying for influence in Central Asia, a rivalry which would become known as The Great Game. Mahan realized not only the strategic importance of the region, but of its center, the Persian Gulf, he labeled the area surrounding the Persian Gulf as the Middle East, said that after Egypt's Suez Canal, it was the most important passage for Britain to control in order to keep the Russians from advancing towards British India.
Mahan first used the term in his article "The Persian Gulf and International Relations", published in September 1902 in the National Review, a British journal. The Middle East, if I may adopt a term which I have not seen, will some day need its Malta, as well as its Gibraltar. Naval force has the quality of mobility; the British Navy should have the facility to concentrate in force if occasion arise, about Aden and the Persian Gulf. Mahan's article was reprinted in The Times and followed in October by a 20-article series entitled "The Middle Eastern Question," written by Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol. During this series, Sir Ignatius expanded the definition of Middle East to include "those regions of Asia which extend to the borders of India or command the approaches to India." After the series ended in 1903, The Times removed quotation marks from subsequent uses of the term. Until World War II, it was customary to refer to areas centered around Turkey and the eastern shore of the Mediterranean as the "Near East", while the "Far East" centered on China, the Middle East meant the area from Mesopotamia to Burma, namely the area between the Near East and the Far East.
In the late 1930s, the British established the Middle East Command, based in Cairo, for its military forces in the region. After that time, the term "Middle East" gained broader usage in Europe and the United States, with the Middle East Institute founded in Washington, D. C. in 1946, among other usage. The description Middle has led to some confusion over changing definitions. Before the First World War, "Near East" was used in English to refer to the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire, while "Middle East" referred to Iran, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Turkestan. In contrast, "Far East" referred to the countries of East Asia With the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, "Near East" fell out of common use in English, while "Middle East" came to be applied to the re-emerging countries of the Islamic world. However, the usage "Near East" was retained by a variety of academic disciplines, including archaeology and ancient history, where it describes an area identical to the term Middle East, not used by these disciplines.
The first official use of the term "Middle East" by the United States government was in the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine, which pertained to the Suez Crisis. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles defined the Middle East as "the area lying between and including Libya on the west and Pakistan on the east and Iraq on the North and the Arabian peninsula to the south, plus the Sudan and Ethiopia." In 1958, the State Department explained that the terms "Near East" and "Middle East" were interchangeable, defined the region as including only Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. The Associated Press Styleboo
Yaylı tambur
The yaylı tambur is a bowed long-neck lute from Turkey. Derived from the older plucked tambur, it has a long, fretted neck and a round metal or wooden soundbox, covered on the front with a skin or acrylic head similar to that of a banjo; the instrument is held vertically, with the soundbox resting in the player's lap or between the calves. The bow is grasped sideways, with the little and middle fingers pressing on the horsehairs, while the thumb and index fingers hold the rightmost wooden edge of the bow; the leftmost strings of the instrument unite into a single course to form a doubled-string, tuned to a unison, lifted from the bridge. This is; the rest are sympathetic strings numbering from 4 to 6 which are tuned to the octave, fifth and/or fourth of the main doubled-string. Due to the special nature of the instrument, the neck behaves as though it was unfretted despite the ordinary placement of numerous frets; that is to say, the fingers can press down on unfretted parts of the neck to achieve the same effect as stopping the frets.
This allows the glissandi and portamenti to be executed flawlessly which constitute the primary characteristics of yaylı tanbur. Moreover, the frets can be moved about depending on the tastes and choices of the player to achieve correct intonation of a given makam. Dr. Ozan Yarman has proposed an alternate 24-tone tuning and fretting for the tanbur that he has applied to his own instrument, which replaces the Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek tone-system in use for Turkish Art music while relying on the same array of accustomed microtonal accidentals to notate. Turkish musical instruments Music of Turkey Tambur Kemenche Igil Morin khuur
