Updates_part 3 (Insights on Kurdish music)

Before we jumped into the different types of kurdish instruments, which is mostly the same as the whole middle eastern musical instruments, let me update more on the kurdish music culture.

MORE INFORMATION ON KURDISH MUSIC CULTURE

Traditionally, there are three types of Kurdish Classical performers - storytellers (çîrokbêj), minstrels (stranbêj) and bards (dengbêj). We have learnt about the interesting bards in the previous post, now, lets go into the minstrels.

MINSTRELS
A minstrel was a medieval European bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories about distant places or about real or imaginary historical events. Though minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish the works of others. Minstrelsy fed into later traditions of traveling entertainers, which continued to be moderately strong into the early 20th century, and which has some continuity down to today's buskers or street musicians.

Some of the musical instruments they used include harps, fiddles, bagpipes, flutes, flageolets, citterns, and kettledrums.

Ahhh interesting!! Buskers actually originated from minstrels!



CONTINUE: HISTORY OF KURDISH MUSIC
Many songs are epic in nature, such as the popular Lawiks which are heroic ballads recounting the tales of Kurdish heroes such as Saladin. Saladin was a Kurdish Muslim who became the Sultan of Egypt and Syria. He led Muslim opposition to the European Crusaders in the Levant.

Kurdish Music has very ancient roots that go back to the Hurrian period of Kurdish history. A Hurrian tablet dating back to the 13th century B.C. was discovered in Ugaret; it contains in its upper portion the text of a Hurrian hymn. In the lower portion, it contains a series of numbers and technical terms that have been interpreted as a score rendering the tune to which the hymn would have been sung. This is then the earliest known musical score in history. ----> an interesting fact indeed!

to be continued later...