Author: Nahapetian Zhanna

ARMINFO News Agency
September 29, 2006 Friday

ARMENIAN OPPOSITION SAYS NEW KARABAKH WAR IS POSSIBLE

If the current tendencies develop they may lead to a new war in
Karabakh, says the leader of the opposition New Times party Aram
Karapetyan.

The international mediators are trying to find the golden mean but it
is very hard to draft a document satisfying both sides.

Karapetyan says that the current tendencies are not favorable for
Armenia. It is absolutely clear that the world community prefers
bringing Azeris back to the security zone to determining the status
of Karabakh.

EuroNews – English Version
September 27, 2006

Parliament’s scathing report on Turkey

The European Parliament has warned Turkey it must speed up reforms if
it wants to join the European Union. The message comes in a highly
critical though non-binding report by EU lawmakers. They accuse
Ankara of failing to live up to promises it made to start talks last
October on joining the bloc. This adds to pressure on Turkey to open
its ports and airports to EU member Cyprus under an extended customs
agreement.

The parliament’s political groups are deeply divided over the future
with Turkey. Liberal chief Graham Watson underscored the negotiations
are likely to drag on: "They (the negotiations) will probably be
slower than we initially envisaged, because the pace of reforms in
Turkey is slower than we hoped, and because the speed of developing a
European Constitution to allow us to take in more members is slower
than we hoped as well. But let’s proceed!" The report cited
"insufficient progress" on freedom of expression, religious and
minority rights, women’s rights and the rule of law.

The parliament also reiterated its call on Turkey to acknowledge the
Armenian genocide, but did not make recognition by Ankara a
precondition for EU membership. On this subject, Greek socialist
Panos Beglitis said: "Political pre-requisites here, concerning
Turkey’s European prospects and its adhesion negotiations, must not
be imposed. That would a major political fault – changing the rules
in mid-game. Turkey must itself come to terms with its own history."

Parliament has never tried to veto a country joining the bloc but has
pressured EU hopefuls to speed up reforms in the past. In its next
regular progress report on Turkey on Nov. 8, the European Commission
has promised to take parliament’s views into account.

ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
September 28, 2006 Thursday

Armenian govt to allocate more land plots for Russian jet fighters

Tigran Liloyan

YEREVAN, September 28

The Armenian government will allocate additional land plots for the
deployment and servicing of MiG-29 jet fighters which are part of the
Russian military base in Armenia.

A building or a land plot for a nursery school, intended for the
children of Russian servicemen will also be allocated, according to
the agreement signed on Thursday by the intergovernmental commission
on the handover of land plots and immovable property for the
deployment and functioning of the Russian military base

The parties have coordinated the settlement procedure and the payment
of the expenses related to the presence of the base in Armenia.

Head of the Armenian part of the commission, First Deputy Defense
Minister, army chief of staff Col Gen Mikhail Arutyunyan said the
commission’s work is aimed toward the settlement of issues within the
framework of bilateral military cooperation, such as the welfare and
housing conditions of the Russian servicemen. A squadron of MiGs is
deployed at the airfield in Yerevan, who cover the republic’s air
space together with air defense units. It is for these planes that
land plots will be allocated, Arutyunyan.

According to Igor Gromyko, an adviser with the Russian Embassy in
Armenia, who co-chairs the commission for Russia, “the session has
passed in the spirit of traditional mutual understanding between two
allies.”

FRENCH PRESIDENT ARRIVING IN ARMENIA SEPTEMBER 29 ON STATE VISIT

PanARMENIAN.Net
28.09.2006 14:21 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ September 29 – October 1 French President Jacques
Chirac will pay a state visit to Armenia on an invitation of Armenian
President Robert Kocharian, reports the Press Office of the Armenian
leader. The official welcoming ceremony will take place at Zvartnots
international airports September 29. Then Kocharian and Chirac will
meet in the Armenian President’s residence. The French leader will
visit Tsitsernakaberd complex, will lay a wreath to Memorial of the
Armenian Genocide Victims, will visit the Genocide Museum within the
framework of his visit.

Chirac is also scheduled to meet with Catholicos of All Armenians
Garegin II and will visit the French Embassy in Yerevan. The Square
of France in the center of the Armenian capital will be opened with
participation of the two presidents. Besides, they will be present
at Aznavour and Friends concert, which will open the Year of Armenia
in France, titled "Armenia my friend."

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT SET TO VOTE ON TURKEY REPORT

NTV MSNBC, Turkey
Sept 27 2006

There has been widespread criticism of the report in Ankara, much of
it focusing on efforts to add new conditions to Turkey’s EU accession
requirements.

Guncelleme: 12:23 TSÝ 27 Eylul 2006 CarþambaSTRASBOURG – The European
Parliament is to vote on a report prepared by Dutch centre-right MEP
Camiel Eurlings on Turkey’s progress towards meeting the membership
criteria of the European Union Wednesday.

The report says that there has been a slowing down of Turkey’s efforts
to meet the accession requirements of the EU, and is critical of
the some elements of the Turkish government’s program to implement
legislative reforms set out by the bloc for membership. However,
it is expected that some amendments to the original report, added
by members of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee,
will be dropped from the final document before it is voted on.

These include a requirement for Ankara to accept that the Ottoman
Empire committed an act of genocide against its Armenian citizens
during the First World War. Turkey has always denied such an event
took place. Eurlings’ report stresses that Turkey must do more to
strengthen freedom of expression and minority religion rights and
work to find a resolution to the dispute on the island of Cyprus.

–Boundary_(ID_VCZg+jrQLgNnu3EVnpntjQ)–

NEW EU WARNING ON TURKEY REFORMS

BBC News, UK
Sept 27 2006

Turkey faces years of tough EU membership negotiations The European
Parliament has adopted a report warning that the pace of reform in
Turkey has slowed, jeopardising Ankara’s EU membership bid.

But MEPs dropped a clause demanding that Turkey recognise as "genocide"
the mass killings of Armenians in 1915.

Turkey maintains that the Armenians were casualties of turmoil as the
Ottoman empire crumbled. Armenians say up to 1.5 million died in a
"genocide".

The non-binding report said Turkey had failed to ensure freedom
of expression.

It called for the abolition or amendment of Turkish laws such as
Article 301 "which threaten European free speech norms".

Article 301 of the Turkish penal code has been used to prosecute
several well-known authors for "insulting Turkishness".

Cyprus deadlock

The MEPs also called on Turkey to recognise the Republic of Cyprus
and lift its embargo on Cypriot ships and planes, saying continued
failure to do so "will have serious implications for the [EU]
negotiation process and could even bring it to a halt".

The report was adopted by 429 votes in favour to 71 against, with
125 abstentions.

It said the European Parliament "regrets the slowing down of the reform
process" in Turkey, though it welcomed some recent Turkish steps to
crack down on torture and corruption and to extend women’s rights.

On the Armenian question, MEPs said Turkey must come to terms with
its past, although recognition of the "genocide" was not a condition
for EU accession.

The European Commission is to publish its next annual report on
Turkey’s progress on 8 November.

The parliament’s report came a day after Bulgaria and Romania were
given the go-ahead to join the EU on 1 January 2007.

In Ankara, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the EU
against introducing any new entrance criteria.

ATOM-ANTI-TERROR — ’06 EXERCISES BEGIN IN ARMENIA
by Vladimir Zainetdinov

ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 25, 2006 Monday 07:50 PM EST

Simulated "terrorists" will seek "to seize" an Armenian nuclear
power station during large-scale operational and tactical anti-terror
exercises that begin in the Republic of Armenia on Tuesday.

The exercises, codenamed Atom-Anti-Terror –2006 will involve the
special services of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
and the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

Boris Mylnikov, chief of the CIS anti-terrorist center, has told
Itar-Tass, "These are the first such exercises to be conducted in
the CIS at a nuclear power industry facility".

Invited to watch the exercises as observers are officials of
G-8 countries, the Anti-Terrorist Unit of the Secretariat of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the
Counterterrorist Committee of the United Nations Security Council,
the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, and the regional
anti-terrorist center of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The United States, Greece, France, China, and the OSCE have confirmed
their attendance. Out of CIS countries, members of the special
services of Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan will participate
in the Atom-Anti-Terror -2006 exercises, Mylnikov said.

HEARING FOR GENOCIDE DENIAL CASE SET FOR SEPTEMBER 18

Public Radio of Armenia
Sept 18 2006

On Monday, September 18, a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a
Turkish group and others seeking to rewrite history with respect to
the Armenian Genocide, will be heard in US District Court in Boston,
Massachusetts.

The lawsuit, filed last year by the Assembly of Turkish American
Associations (ATAA), asserts that the Massachusetts Department of
Education’s decision to remove denialist materials in the school
curriculum amounts to "censoring" and therefore would be a violation
of the First Amendment. The Armenian Assembly immediately responded
when the suit was filed, hiring a first-rate legal team that includes
Irwin Chemerinsky of Duke University and co-counsel Arnie Rosenfeld
of the firm Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP, to fight
against this latest assault waged by revisionists seeking to deny
the Armenian Genocide.

The ATAA lawsuit is part of an ongoing Turkish campaign to deny the
historical truth. Having failed to insert their denialist materials
into the state curriculum, the ATAA brought the suit, arguing a tired
and discredited position that contradicts the current trend in Turkish
society to understand its past.

KAMANCHEH BY PEYMAN NASEHPOUR

Persian Mirror
The Persian Bowed Musical Instrument

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
a historical introduction to this important Persian spike fiddle.

Kamancheh before Ghajar Period

Kamancheh is an ancient instrument. According to different books that
the author has considered, 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
bowed instrument called 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. It should be
mentioned that mezrab today is used for plectrum of Persian plucked
instruments) of gheshak is called kamancheh. The author believes
that etymologically Hasan Kashani was right and 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’ that 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 choice 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 neck and he was used to play that
while was 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 (Armenian kamancheh player)
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 the introduction of violin to Iran,
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.

The reader may 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 some ethno-musicologist
believe that 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, gatherings,
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 the abolishment
of the art of kamancheh playing.

The picture of Asghar Bahari, appeared in Jean During’s The Art of
Persian Music, pg. 114.

Woman playing the kamancheh in a painting from the Hasht-Behesht
Palace in Isfahan, Iran, 1669 (from Wikipedia).

Write a Letter to the Editor or Send an email to this author

More Persian Instruments Articles

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peyman Nasehpour was born in Teran, in 1974. He is a musician and plays
the Persian hand drums, including the tonbak, the ghaval and the daf.

He lives in Germany.

For more on Peyman, visit his website Rhythmweb.

This article was contributed by PEYMAN NASEHPOUR, Guest Contributor
for PersianMirror.

ARMINFO News Agency
September 12, 2006 Tuesday

M. BAGHDASAROV: INVESTIGATION OF A-320 CRASH HAS MANY "BLACK SPOTS"
WHICH NO ONE CAN EXPLAIN

The investigation of the crash of A-320 belonging to Armavia airline
has many "black spots" which no one can explain, says Mikhail
Baghdasarov, Armenian businessman, the owner of Armavia airline, in
an interview with Armnews TV.

He says the allegations by the International Aviation Committee that
the reason of the crash was allegedly a "human factor" are not
ethical at least for the fact that the regulations of the
International Aviation Union ban publication of investigation results
before the very end of the investigation. "The accusations by Ms.
Anodina, IAC Head, are at least untimely and we do not agree with
them. Our specialists engaged in the investigation have not found
answers to many questions so far," M. Baghdasarov says. That is why,
he believes that it would be right to continue the investigation as
long as all the issues get answers. He thinks the investigation is
currently on such a stage when it is untimely to over it. Moreover,
IAC’s arguments are not convincing enough, the businessman says. He
did not give his personal opinion of the tragedy, stating that unlike
IAC leadership he will do it only after the investigation is over.

M. Baghdasarov says today Armavia is developing quite dynamically. It
will make itself known as a leading company successfully competing
with foreign airlines in the Armenian market. He says the company
intends to buy new planes produced in 2005 and even in 2006.