In Hindustan dance music (vocal and instrumental combined) plays an important part in the religious ceremonies of the temples, both in the voluptuous dances of thedevadhazis, or bayadères,[18]and in the chanting of themontranis, scriptural formulas set to a fixed musical rhythm. The size of a Hindoo orchestra varies, and the dance-music it plays is not always of a sensuous, erotic type, but often very animated and vigorous in character, such as accompanies the dancing at the courts of the rajahs. Music frequently accompanies dramatic representations as well, and there is a great deal of popular song. The Hindoos havedhourpadandkourka, warlike hymns,hoti, canticles in honor of Krishna,stouti, official odes,bichnoupoud, evening songs,kheal, love songs,sohla, nuptial songs,thoumries, patriotic songs,palma, cradle songs, anddarda, love songs. In many cases Hindoo music shows signs of Mohammedan influence, especially in the variety and liveliness of its rhythm. It is curious to note that the use of certain types accompanying instruments is restricted to certain social classes, priests, mendicant holy men, dancing girls, and so forth.
Mohammedan music is associated with a wide variety of voluptuous secular dances, for the Mohammedan Orient possesses an art of dance equal to the most delicate inspirations of our poets. There is the dance of theOuled Nail, the famous dancing girls of Biskra, the Tunisian ‘Dance of the Hair,’[19]the Algerian ‘Dance of the Pitchers,’ the dances of the Egyptian Ghaouazi or ‘Almees,’ exponents of what is known to us as thedanse du ventre, of which one of the dance airs follows:
p60scoreGhaouazi Dance.
Ghaouazi Dance.
[PNG][[audio/mpeg]
There are the dances of Syrian, Soudanese and other dancing-girls. Then there are the special dances, accompanied by choral singing and instrumental music, that celebrate the nuptial ceremony throughout the Orient.
The variety of customs, of traditional observances and usages interwoven with exotic music is endless. Many religious chants, for instance, are fixed by tradition, and are undoubtedly of high antiquity. Suchis the chanting of the sacred books in the Temple of the Sacred Tooth in Ceylon, where on each night of the full moon the whole text of the ‘Tripitakas,’ or ‘Three Baskets’ of wisdom, is recited by relays of yellow-robed priests, succeeding each other every two hours between the dark and the dawn. They are said to chant in deep resonant voices, as steady and continuous as the roar of the surf, without break, quaver, or pause. When we consider that Buddhist priests have repeated these sacred texts in this manner on every night of the full moon for twenty-eight centuries, the traditional cantillation of the Koran appears a thing of recent date. The following interesting ‘call to prayer’ of the muezzin has been traditionally handed down, and its chant is supposed to antedate the era of Mohammed:
p61score
[PNG][[audio/mpeg]
Al-la-ho ak-bar,Al-la - - - - ho ak-bar,ach ha-dou en-nâ la i-lah ell Al-lah.Ach ha-dou en-nâ. Mo-ham-medra-soul Al-lah - - - - - Al-la-ho ak-bar - - - - la i-lah ell Al-lah.
Al-la-ho ak-bar,Al-la - - - - ho ak-bar,ach ha-dou en-nâ la i-lah ell Al-lah.Ach ha-dou en-nâ. Mo-ham-medra-soul Al-lah - - - - - Al-la-ho ak-bar - - - - la i-lah ell Al-lah.
Al-la-ho ak-bar,Al-la - - - - ho ak-bar,ach ha-dou en-nâ la i-lah ell Al-lah.Ach ha-dou en-nâ. Mo-ham-medra-soul Al-lah - - - - - Al-la-ho ak-bar - - - - la i-lah ell Al-lah.
And the Hindooragasandmantranisoffer further proof of the conserving examples of tradition.
A curious custom among the Chinese of immemorial antiquity is that of attaching whistles weighing only a few grams to the tails of pigeons soon after they emerge from the shell, by means of fine copper wire. The whistles are of two kinds; bamboo, with from two to five tubes, or gourds, with sometimes as many as twenty-five apertures. All the whistles in a flock are tuned to a different pitch. As they fly about Pekin andother cities they fill the air with a sort of wind-blown music. It is interesting as a commentary on the Chinese national love of sweet sounds.
A custom of the Mohammedan Orient is the use of the flute in services for the dead. Modern Arab mortuary hymns are sung to the accompaniment of the flute, and the employment of the instrument in this connection dates back to ancient times. It is customary in almost every occupation in the Orient to sing traditional songs while work is going on. The Arab camel-drivers have a melody of strange intonations and long-drawn-out sounds which may have come down from the days of Antar; the boatmen on the Nile, thefellahintoiling on its banks, the ambulant peddlers of Oriental cities, all have their traditional airs or cries. Some are very poetic; the water carriers of Mecca sing when they dispense their wares: ‘Paradise and forgiveness be the lot of him who gave you this water!’ When, in June, Arab boys offer bunches of fragrant pink jasmine buds, enclosed in fig-leaves, for sale in the streets of Kairowan, those who buy return to their work chanting in a quaint minor key: ‘We render thanks to Allah for sending rain to make the flowers bloom.’ The Burmese love to thresh rice to the sound of music, and the Buddhist nuns in Japan solicit contributions by striking small metal gongs attached to their belt with little wooden hammers carried in their hands. The Hindoo palanquin-bearers, the Japanese rickshaw-men, the Chinese coolies and sampan-men, all have their characteristic songs, most of them traditional, for the East is slow to change.
The art of music in the Orient and the art of music in Western Europe have little in common. It may be that Christian music in the first few centuries of itsexistence was vaguely similar to that music we have been discussing, but after harmony found its place in our music a comparison between the two arts is far to seek. In Oriental music the dominant feature is rhythm, insistent and often unvaried. This may be partly because rhythm is the most exciting element in music and the most immediate in its appeal, partly because in the Orient music was and is almost never dissociated from the dance or from some sort of regular movement such as rowing or reaping. In our music rhythm is constantly varied and subtly disguised. As for melody, the Orientals are bound to short phrases repeated again and again, lacking contrast and only primitively balanced; and most of their melodies are in scales different from ours. Of harmony they have relatively no idea, whereas the music of Western Europe has been subjected to the tremendously powerful influence of harmony in one form or another for nearly a thousand years. Hence, even though the rhythm and melody in both have come from the same instinct in the race of man, the Western and the Eastern arts of music seem almost radically different.
In general the difference between the two is only exaggerated by the few cases in modern music when composers have made use of Oriental themes or rhythms or instruments. Such cases by no means show a working together or an approach of the two systems; for the mere fact that a certain twist of melody, a certain insistence of rhythm, a beat of the tam-tam or the gong can give a strong Oriental color to music proves how foreign Oriental music still sounds to our ears. It may be said that European music has been influenced by Asiatic music hardly at all, unless, possibly, the prominent, almost barbaric rhythms of some Russian music have sprung from a mixture of the Oriental with the Slav.
F. H. M.