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Chapitre d'ouvrage Année : 2021

Which Lute was played in the Sawt of the Gulf before the 20th century ?

Résumé

This article raises a question which may seem trivial at a first glance: which lute was played in the Sawt of the Gulf before the 20th century ? Indeed, the five strings Arabic lute (locally called ‘ûd shâmî), seems so much anchored in the musical practice of the Arabian Peninsula during the 20th century, that this question may seem out of place. Nevertheless, we know that it was not the case in Yemen as well as in Hijaz (today Western Saudi Arabia) at the beginning of the 20th century, since the main instrument was the qanbûs, a four strings monoxyle lute with a skin soundboard. In Kuwait and Bahrain, some rare oral and written testimonies show that there was another lute which was played by Sawt musicians like Yusuf al-Baker (Kuwait) and Mohammed Zwayed (Bahrain), and was sometimes called “the Indian lute”. However, a comparative study of its morphological descriptions and historical material as well as of the qanbûs in the rest of the Peninsula (including Oman) convinced us that these two were the same instrument. This comparison is mainly based on the tuning of the “Indian lute”, the same use of maqām Rāst on C1 as a main modal structure until now in the Sawt, with mainly a zalzalian scale and the same ambitus. This hypothesis is reinforced by the use of the tawshiha form (a sort of a postlude) which is specific to the Sawt, but was obviously influenced by Yemen practice (and poetry) and by the qanbûs’ structure. The difference in names of the instrument is not astonishing, because this qanbûs had actually different local names in the region. The connection with India can be explained by the fact that this instrument was probably common among the Arab and Hadrami (Yemeni) diaspora in several cities in India during the last three or four centuries, and that this indirectly influenced the Gulf (by the return of some emigrants, and some more direct influences, studied in other publications). This brings the history of music in the Arabian Peninsula in a multi-cultural perspective which shows its complex links with the Indian Ocean.
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Dates et versions

halshs-03662827, version 1 (09-05-2022)

Identifiants

Citer

Jean Lambert. Which Lute was played in the Sawt of the Gulf before the 20th century ?. Issa Boulos, Virginia Danielson and Anne Rasmussen. Music in Arabia. Perspectives on Heritage, Mobility and Nation., Indiana University Press, pp.87-106, 2021, 9780253057532. ⟨10.2307/j.ctv21hrhz3.11⟩. ⟨halshs-03662827⟩
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