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Dar brings Baluchi music to
Kuwait
Prof During performing at the Al-Maidan
Cultural Centre.
On Monday, Feb 8, Dar Al-Athar Al-Islamiyyah introduced their
friends and patrons to the fascinating world of ‘Baluchi Music and
Trance Healing’ at the Al-Maidan Cultural Centre through a lecture,
images, beautiful sound bites and a rare and unpublished video
footage shot in Karachi, Pakistan. The speaker/ performer for the
evening was the celebrated ethnomusicologist Prof Jean During, known
for his multifaceted approach which invests his publications and
lecture concerts with an originality that combines aesthetics,
religious anthropology and mysticism. His presentation at the Dar Al
Athar was no exception.
He played beautiful strains of music common to areas of Pakistan,
India Afghanistan and Iran, he also offered the audience a look at
ritualistic mystical practices adhered to by sections and areas of
the Indo -Pak subcontinent. Like the Baluchis, rituals practiced by
the ‘sidi sufis’ in Gujarat and similar traditions in Hinduism show
the cross-cultural influences and homogeneity shared by the
Subcontinent.
Traditions
As Director of Research at the French National Centre for Scientific
Research, Prof During spent 11 years in Iran and five years in
Uzbekistan. He has written twelve books on the musical traditions
and cultures of Inner Asia, more than a hundred articles and has
released around 30 CDs. Three of his books have been translated into
Persian. His fieldwork covers many traditions of Inner Asia.
He studies not only musical forms, but also Sufi and Shamanic
rituals and the cultural traditions related to musical practices.In
the 1970’s he learned Persian classical music (on the lute târ and
setâr) with the best masters of the time. Later, in Karachi, he
mastered the playing of the Sufi and trance Baluchi repertoire on
the fiddle sorud. He has given many concerts of these traditions in
Europe and USA. He is one of the rare Westerners who has devoted
himself to composing in the traditional maqâm forms, for which he
was awarded from Cultures France in 2007.
“The Baluchi people occupy a vast territory covering the western
half of Pakistan and southeastern Iran. They also move throughout
the Gulf coastal regions and are found in Turkmen and Afghan
Khôrasân,” notes Prof During, who spent time in Karachi studying and
researching Baluchi music and rituals. “ In both Iran and Pakistan
Baluchis are viewed as marginal and rebellious.”
Long years of migration left them open to various influences. He
spoke of the presence of Baluchis, who can trace their origins to
Africa. “When I spent sometime there, they called me a ‘White
Baluch’,” said the Professor whose beautiful performance was
resonant with his love not only for his subject, but for the people
and culture that he is trying to showcase. “They have preserved a
culture of great originality in which archaic Iranian elements are
rooted in a more ancient Dravidian substratum. They have also
intermingled with the desert peoples of Western India among which
the proto-Gypsies (Luli, Langaw, Ostâ) who for centuries were
outstanding musicians adapting their know-how to local sedentary
traditions.”
Practice
The Professor recounts the instance of the Persian King Brahma who
requested his Indian counterpart for 12,000 Indian musicians who
would practice their art in Persia. These Gypsies are believed to be
the ancestors of the Persian Gypsies. They propagated Indian music
and dancing and may have travelled further into Europe in the next
four to five hundred years, where they are regarded as ancestors of
the Romany people. Speaking of cross cultural blending, the
Professor refers to the musical similarities between India,
Pakistan, Iran and Spain, noting the Eastern influence prevalent in
the popular flamenco.
The sorud is the principal instrument of the Baluch, some of whom
claim a musical lineage that goes back seven generations. It is a
highly sophisticated fiddle with four melodic strings and six
sympathetic strings that resembles the ‘sarinda’ which is popular in
India and Nepal. The scholar went on to intersperse his discourse
with recorded music that illustrated various genres of baluchi
music.
Healing
“Professional baluchi music is a soloist art, but they do come
together and play at festival and other entertainment.” There are
various genres depending on the subject matter and occasion such as
entertainment, love, epic and sufi. The trance songs of the Baluch
draws from both the profane and the sacred types of Baluchi music.
Drawing comparison with the Arabic maqam and thereby establishing
the high artistic value of this form of music, the Professor notes “
In musical hierarchy, the zahirig as a maqam or raga system occupies
the most eminent position.
It works as the basis, the substance of music as well as its
abstract essence, the knowledge of which defines mastery.”
He went on to show through a video recording special healing and
devotional rituals using a specific repertoire of pieces called
guâti-damali, or qalandari, in which the principal actors are the
shaman, the patient and the fiddle player accompanied by a rhythmic
lute (tanburag). A sick person unsuccessfully treated by a doctor
and a mullah who uses appropriate koranic prayers and chants, as a
last recourse consults a shaman who specializes in dealing with a
kind of spirit called ‘guat’.
The shaman organizes a trance session in order to neutralize the
evil spirit and cure the patient. “These spirits are of a particular
species, much more stubborn than ordinary ones, and cannot be dealt
with except by organizing a musical session (leb, la’ab) with the
obligatory participation of the fiddle sorud. All night long music
(mainly instrumental) is performed to the patient in an endeavor to
please the guâtand force him into manifesting himself through the
patient’s trance. This process has to be repeated several nights in
succession after which the khalife bargain with the spirit,”notes
Prof During.
These sessions require the obligatory performance of the fiddle and
tanboura. In this ritual, instrumental and vocal music and a form of
dance trance state is the fundamental principle of operation along
with a pike, fire, perfume, incense and sacrifice. The trance like
state of the khallife is at times punctuated by high drama and
theatrics. At the end of his presentation, Professor During was
asked if he believed in what seemed a mere superstitious ritual. He
refers to this ceremony as a rich, profound and complex phenomenon
which cannot be reduced to the ordinary category of possession cults
like voodoo, zar or candomble. It has much more in common with
shamanism and even Sufi ritual as the officiator (khalife) enters
himself into a state of trance and is helped in his diagnosis by a
familiar guât.
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