bow against the two strings. Common techniques include multiple stroking by the right hand and a variety of left-hand
fingering. It is mainly played in solo fashion but sometimes accompanies dances, long songs (urtiin duu), mythical
tales, ceremonies and everyday tasks related to horses. To this day, the morin khuur repertory has retained some
tunes (tatlaga) specifically intended to tame animals. Owing to the simultaneous presence of a main tone and
overtones, morin khuur music has always been difficult to transcribe using standard notation. It has been transmitted
orally from master to apprentice for many generations.
Over the past forty years, most Mongolians have settled in urban centres, far from the morin khuur’s historical and
spiritual context. Moreover, the tuning of the instrument is often adapted to the technical requirements of stage
performance, resulting in higher and louder sounds that erase many timbral subtleties. Fortunately, surviving herding
communities in southern Mongolia have managed to preserve many aspects of morin khuur playing along with related
rituals and customs.
Qyl-qobyz
‘Korkyt was our first shaman, and the first to play on the qyl-qobyz. An angel had appeared in his dreams and foretold
him he would die at the age of 40. So he rode on a camel’s mare around the whole world, looking for a place where
he could defeat death. When he played the qyl-qobyz in trance, the rivers stopped running and the animals refrained
from hunting so that they could listen to the music, and Korkyt felt shielded and immortal. But at one time even he
felt tired, rolled out his carpet at a riverbank and fell asleep. A spider crawled out of the river and bit him – even
Korkyt had to die.’
Recounts Raushan Orazbaeva of her instrument, the qyl-qobyz. It has a scoop-shaped body, chiselled from a whole
piece of walnut or birchwood, and two horsehair strings that are played by lightly touching them to produce overtones
(flageolet): The specific timbre comes from the absence and the richness of the overtones. The qyl-qobyz is tuned
differently for music each kind of music: for epic recitation, the strings are set at the interval of a fourth; for music
linked to shamanistic practises, they are set at the interval of a fifth. (Named kyl-kyak the instrument is also to be
found among the Kazakh’s south-eastern neighbours the Kirgiz.)
In former times, playing the instrument was an exclusively male domain; it was closely linked to shamanism and to the
cast of bakshy who were healers, storytellers, and fortune-tellers travelling the vast steppes of Central Asia. In the
1920s, Soviet authorities banned shamanism but allowed qyl-qobyz to be played in secular contexts and in concerts.
Also Raushan Orazbaeva sees herself as an artist free to play whatever she wants. Yet, her instrument still shows the
emblems of its shamanistic background, little mirrors and jingles, and her own performance style is not far from
trance: Küy is the Kazakh word for an inner state of mind, an emotion, a way of linking one’s own thoughts and
feelings with those of the listeners: ‘Man, and especially a musician has to be honest. Only then do I receive certain
information. And only if I get this information I can convey it to my audience and be successful. Then the music may
even have a healing effect, it can ban evil spirits, sickness, or even death. And then sometimes the music comes from
real deep within, and I cannot control what is happening. One may compare this to trance. In such a situation a new
piece of music is born. I sense then a connection to an inexplicable power that is directly transferred onto the strings
of the qyl-qobyz.’
Rababa
Rababa (also rabab, rebab, sometimes also rebec) is the generic name for bowed fiddles in the Arab world. These
fiddles are of two types: spike fiddles especially popular among the Bedouins and classical fiddles that may be
regarded as the kamancheh’s predecessor.
The oldest and best-known spike fiddle is the Bedouin monochord rababa, which has a thin wooden frame, rectangular
or waisted, covered with skin stitched on one or more sides. The neck stick pierces the whole body and is extended on
one end by a metal spike. The single horsehair string is rubbed with resin. A rababa is fretless; for intonation, rababa
players make movable frets of thread or fine cloth bands tied around the neck.
Since Bedouin music is based on the word, a rababa player is expected to be primarily a poet, capable of memorising
poetry and of improvising it instantly. He is called al-sha’ir, the poet (and not the musician); he uses his rabab al-
sha’ir, his poet’s fiddle, to punctuate his recitation. His verbal talent (not his musicianship) gives him his authority in
the tribe. He is perceived as the main entertainer and the person who communicates social information and
commentary; above all, he is feared, for the shaykh’s reputation is in his hands: his poems praising or criticising the
shaykh might be transmitted and repeated for generations.
The sound box of a traditional rababa is made from a coconut shell cut open on one side to fix the skin. If the sound
emanating from the coconut is judged good or dhakar, male, the box is kept; if the sound is considered female, the
box is either thrown away or opened at the back. The strings must be taken from a living horse. Current innovations
include a plastic membrane mounted on a metal-rimmed sound box, and the use of a metal string―artificial materials
are more independent of weather changes. Gypsies were the first to use gasoline cans and barrels of different sizes as
sound boxes. New shapes (triangular and circular) are being experimented with in urban centres in the eastern Arab
world.’
Rebab