The Sunday Guardian , India
August 24, 2013 Saturday
Mapping music: Melodies that travelled across continents
India
India, Aug. 24 — How do you define the Bhairav family of musical
notes whose route you have studied across various geographies?
A. I’m not trying to define a Bhairav family of musical notes. I am
referring to various associations between clusters of notes that are
seen in the Bhairav family. A lot of melodies in the areas that I am
talking about are in the Bhairavi raga and are a part of the Bhairav
family. It would be closest to the natural minor scale in Western
classical music, the Phrygian scale in ancient Greek music. It
corresponds to the Hijaz makam in Turkish, Persian or Egyptian
classical music systems.
There are variants of the Bhairavi in the Indian Subcontinent and
neighbouring regions, which travelled via West Asia, the
Mediterranean, Ethiopia, Nubia, Southern Europe and North Africa to
reach Mali, and there appears to be a common aesthetic constellation
defining these.
Q. How did “musicality” move over land and ocean?
A. It is important to note that there were fascinating connections
between far flung places through music and musicians, connections that
are not adequately acknowledged in historical or musicological work.
For instance, we can identify distinct sites of intense interaction
and ferment: Baghdad in the 8th-9th century, Kochi from the 7th
century onwards, Delhi from the 12th century, Cordoba in Southern
Spain from the 9th century onwards, Morocco and Tunis from around the
same period.
Q. How is it that the Flamenco music of the Gitanos is similar to the
music in Sindh, Rajasthan and Punjab? Is the same commonality found in
Andalusian music as well?
A. Between 800 and 900 AD, a large number of people believed to be
Chandalas, or the persecuted and shunned lowest castes from Sindh,
Rajasthan and Punjab, migrated across to Persia by 1100 AD, after
which they split into two migratory routes. One group went northwards
through Armenia and Byzantium into Europe. This group split further –
the Romas went to the Balkans while the Sintis went to Central Europe.
The other group went through Syria and Egypt and finally settled in
southern Spain. They came to be known as the ‘kale’ or ‘black’ Gitano
people. Their left the echoes of the Bhairavi all across the places
that they travelled through and settled in. The remarkable
similarities in the scale used in the Phrygian, as well as nuance and
mode of rendering is seen in the Soleares, Seguriyas and the Bulerias
within Flamenco forms that are associated with the Gitanos. The
Gitanos entered Spain by the late 14th and 15th centuries. By this
time the Andalusian music tradition had already become quite
established, but the Gitanos contributed their own metaphors of loss
and movement.
The music of the Gitanos is part of the Andalusian music tradition
which in turn consists quite heavily of the kinds of melodies that I
am talking about. Particular forms of the Flamenco, like the Bulerias,
Seguriyas and Soleares in fact, bear a close resemblance to the Heer
which is sung in many parts of north-western India.
Q. Keeping in mind the Bhairavi connection, how has the love story of
Shirin influenced the musical routes across the regions that it
travelled?
A. The history and the myth of Shirin are interesting in different
ways. She belonged to the Eastern Syriac or the ‘Nestorian’ church,
which, persecuted by the Byzantine church, spread eastward to India.
Notably, it reached Kochi through the Silk Road to China and Central
Asia and westwards and southwards to Ethiopia. Her own migration from
Armenia to be with Khosrow after he pursued and implored her to join
him was a distinct statement of autonomy, according to historical
sources. The myth of her life therefore necessarily carried with it
narratives of identity, loss and migration.
The original love story has many versions. In the twelfth century,
Azerbaijani poet Nezami wrote his epic Chosroes and Shirin in what
historian William Baum refers to as a distinct stage in the life of
the Shirin myth, inserting a love triangle through the character of
the carpenter Ferhad. Contemporary preoccupations with the Shirin myth
can be seen in Abbas Kierostami’s film, Shirin, which juxtaposes the
story against contemporary takes on separation, betrayal and
nationhood. The Turkish Communist poet Nazim Hikmet wrote a play
titled Shirin based on Nezami’s epic and this was choreographed into a
ballet at the Bolshoi by Azerbaijani director Arif Melikov.
We can hear renderings of the Shirin story and myth across Iran,
Azerbaijan, the Indian subcontinent, Turkey, Armenia and Iraq. Again,
many of these are minor note based melodies like the ones I have been
speaking about. The Shirin myth, it appears, is often invoked to
express loss, longing, separation, migration and these melodies are
associated with all these emotions.
Q. Are the Syriacs musically connected with Kerala in terms of the
minor-note based melody trail?
A. Except for the knowledge that Syrian Christianity came to Kerala
from the Middle East, there is no other narrative as such. Though the
relationship of Syriacs to Kerala is well researched, but questions
about musical connections have never been explored, except to note
that early Syrian Christian music bears a stylistic resemblance to
Arabic/Islamic music.
There is as yet no work that shows the connection directly except that
some of the Syrian Christian melodies are found to bear a resemblance
to Arabic music. In fact, if it does, it is likely to be part of the
minor note based melody trail that we are talking about.
Q. Is there a musicological work that solely deals with the routes
travelled by slaves in order to establish a comprehensive syncretism
between Abrahamic traditions and Indian musical traditions?
A. No, there is none as yet. In fact, except for fleeting references
to the Gitanos with their supposed origins from India, there is hardly
anything said about a relationship between the Abrahamic traditions
and Indian music.
Q. How did the rift between Zyriab, the black slave musician and
Ibrahim al Mawsili in Baghdad give birth to the predecessor of the
present day Spanish guitar?
A. It is said that Zyriab was the slave and student of
Ibrahim-al-Mawsili, the master theoretician and teacher of music in
Abbasid Baghdad in the 9th century. Zyriab had a difference of opinion
with his master and is said to have been banished from the Abbasid
empire by Ibrahim’s son, Ishaq. He went away first to Ifriqqiya, now
modern Tunis and then settled in Cordoba in Southern Spain. Zyriab
carried with him the Persian lute, added a string, changed its tuning,
introduced a plectrum with an eagle’s feather and this is said to have
been the precursor to the Spanish guitar.
Q. How did the interaction between musicians from India and Baghdad,
during the 12th -14th centuries, culminate and then adopt a new
identity?
A. From the late 12th century onwards, North Indian classical music is
known to have been influenced by Persian and ‘Islamic’ music
traditions, including traditions from Baghdad. This is referred to as
the Turko-Persian-Hindavi tradition in many works, which got
established by the 14th century and then underwent more elaboration
with Amir Khusrow and then the Mughals.