Sufism and Oral Tradition
Jan. 7th, 2005 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
merchimerchIts been a busy day. After my lesson this morning I went with Malika opa to go to Komila opa's birthday party, which is basically a special version of a "gap" or ladies' gathering.
It was entertaining and exhausting and there was altogether far too much mayonnaise to be had again. I made the mistake of trying to refuse some pickled beets because it Malika opa pushing them on me. I think I got a double portion because of it. She looked at me as she was scooping spoon after spoon of it onto my plate and said "you don't have to like it, it's useful for your organism!"
My organism is very very tired of beets and mayonnaise, I don't care how useful they are.
It was very neat to hear a bunch of ladies trading stories who had all been at the conservatory together 20 years ago. There were a couple of really gregarious story tellers in the bunch, and one woman showed up who went back to Namangan after graduating and who many people hadn't seen for 20 years. Surprisingly, there wasn't any music to be had at this gathering, I think maybe there was noone to call to play for people since all the performers were there to hang out and celebrate the birthday. Plus I imagine if performing had broken out that there would have been a lot of competition and jockeying for position. Heck the jockeying for position at the table was scary and competative enough (the honor of sitting furthest from the door is reserved for the most respected guest, but these folks have all known each other for ages and so every new person who arrived was badger further and further up the hierarchy). The other odd competition was who would say the blessing/prayer whenever someone new arrived. Malika opa actually had to say quite a few of them, I think because she got stuck at the head of the table with me, the foreigner, i.e. the trump card of all honored guests. Ironically the birthday girl was also the host, so she had to sit closest to the door to jump up and do the serving - this is quite normal.
I had errands to run because I got harrangued into proctoring the TOEFL tomorrow morning, so I left after the soup course (gaps usually include a somsa course, a soup course and a main dish course). Because of this, Komila opa came into the coat room bearing a plate of norin (horse meat and homemade noodles) and made me eat a bite and complementing it before folding rest into a non and putting it in a plastic bag for me to take home.
So tomorrow at 8:30 I get to be the evil test proctor....I really don't think that cheaters here will have anything more sinister than what I've seen at UCLA, so I'm not too worried.
And finally, here's some more fieldnotes for posterity
Sufism and the Oral Tradition, notes from 1-07-05’s lesson with Malika opa
In today’s lesson Malika opa referred to Sufism for the first time ever. I’ve been studying with her for 3 years now off and on, covering works from the mumtoz, folk, and maqom repertoires, and I have never heard her mention one word about Sufism. Other people have told me that the Shashmaqom is connected to Sufi practice and Sufi poetry, but none of the maqomists that I speak and play with have ever talked about it. I believe part of this stems from the rather tenuous connection between the two – Shashmaqom is not used in zikrs (Sufi rituals), and has its roots in the courts of Central Asia, not the mosques or dervish practices.
This is why it surprised me so much when Malika turned to me as we were making our way through the pre-ouge portion of Munajat (which comes from the mumtoz repertoire, but is incorporated into Maqom Iroq). All of a sudden, as we were working through the words which are very romantic sounding, (including text about how one can die now that they have seen their beloved, that they are crazy with passion for the unseen beloved, etc), she said “you know Tanya, it is God this poem is talking about. Navoi wrote this to God, it is part of Sufism. You can interpret it either to God or to your soulmate here, but really it is written to God.” I pushed her a little farther on the issue, asking if it got used for zikrs and how it was connected to Sufism and the answer she gave me was that in Sufism there are many paths and that ordinary people use zikrs to connect with God, but Navoi, the author of the song text was writing to God then and that it was a Sufi thing. As far as I understand it, Sufism aims for a connection with God which often sounds somewhat romatic, but is supposed to be more tangible, hence the zikrs which involve what are sometimes quite harsh and jarring repetitive movements to bring practicioners into trance or into a closer connection with god. These movements are usually accompanied by a reciting of the names of God from the Qur’an. The whirling dervishes that have gained reknown in the US and Europe for their graceful spinning sufi practice are Turkish. Central Asian sufi practice, from what I’ve seen, is much more jarring and the exhortations of god’s names are done whith big breathy exhalations. I’ve never known quite how to connect these practices with the court music that I’m studying. I think it may well only be the texts that are the link, though there may well be a musical connection as well.
The other topic that came up in discussion today was about how the canon is maintained. We have talked some about how she is having me play things different from the written versions that Yunus Rajabi published in the 50s. Malika opa mentioned that performance of this genre always passes from teach to student, and that she plays with Farkhiddin’s version, but there are also pieces of herself that she’s added. This means that it is possible for the tradition to change quite a bit with the generations, but it still gets passed down from teacher to student as it has for centuries. When I asked about the big differences between her version and the Rajabi version, in addition to the teacher-student variation issue, she also mentioned that Rajabi hurried to publish those volumes, collecting everything when he was 70 and 80 before he died, and she thanks him for doing that. However, there are differences in how she performs the maqom now, and that isn’t a mistake. She has emphasized the fact that these variations are not mistakes quite a bit lately, and I wonder if this stems from a more hard core conservative interpretation that was pushed at somepoint. Levin seems to mentioned this conservatism in his association with the conservatory in the late 70s. Right now, Malika opa seems to be trying to express the Shashmaqom as a canonized, but nonetheless flexible repertoire.
It was entertaining and exhausting and there was altogether far too much mayonnaise to be had again. I made the mistake of trying to refuse some pickled beets because it Malika opa pushing them on me. I think I got a double portion because of it. She looked at me as she was scooping spoon after spoon of it onto my plate and said "you don't have to like it, it's useful for your organism!"
My organism is very very tired of beets and mayonnaise, I don't care how useful they are.
It was very neat to hear a bunch of ladies trading stories who had all been at the conservatory together 20 years ago. There were a couple of really gregarious story tellers in the bunch, and one woman showed up who went back to Namangan after graduating and who many people hadn't seen for 20 years. Surprisingly, there wasn't any music to be had at this gathering, I think maybe there was noone to call to play for people since all the performers were there to hang out and celebrate the birthday. Plus I imagine if performing had broken out that there would have been a lot of competition and jockeying for position. Heck the jockeying for position at the table was scary and competative enough (the honor of sitting furthest from the door is reserved for the most respected guest, but these folks have all known each other for ages and so every new person who arrived was badger further and further up the hierarchy). The other odd competition was who would say the blessing/prayer whenever someone new arrived. Malika opa actually had to say quite a few of them, I think because she got stuck at the head of the table with me, the foreigner, i.e. the trump card of all honored guests. Ironically the birthday girl was also the host, so she had to sit closest to the door to jump up and do the serving - this is quite normal.
I had errands to run because I got harrangued into proctoring the TOEFL tomorrow morning, so I left after the soup course (gaps usually include a somsa course, a soup course and a main dish course). Because of this, Komila opa came into the coat room bearing a plate of norin (horse meat and homemade noodles) and made me eat a bite and complementing it before folding rest into a non and putting it in a plastic bag for me to take home.
So tomorrow at 8:30 I get to be the evil test proctor....I really don't think that cheaters here will have anything more sinister than what I've seen at UCLA, so I'm not too worried.
And finally, here's some more fieldnotes for posterity
Sufism and the Oral Tradition, notes from 1-07-05’s lesson with Malika opa
In today’s lesson Malika opa referred to Sufism for the first time ever. I’ve been studying with her for 3 years now off and on, covering works from the mumtoz, folk, and maqom repertoires, and I have never heard her mention one word about Sufism. Other people have told me that the Shashmaqom is connected to Sufi practice and Sufi poetry, but none of the maqomists that I speak and play with have ever talked about it. I believe part of this stems from the rather tenuous connection between the two – Shashmaqom is not used in zikrs (Sufi rituals), and has its roots in the courts of Central Asia, not the mosques or dervish practices.
This is why it surprised me so much when Malika turned to me as we were making our way through the pre-ouge portion of Munajat (which comes from the mumtoz repertoire, but is incorporated into Maqom Iroq). All of a sudden, as we were working through the words which are very romantic sounding, (including text about how one can die now that they have seen their beloved, that they are crazy with passion for the unseen beloved, etc), she said “you know Tanya, it is God this poem is talking about. Navoi wrote this to God, it is part of Sufism. You can interpret it either to God or to your soulmate here, but really it is written to God.” I pushed her a little farther on the issue, asking if it got used for zikrs and how it was connected to Sufism and the answer she gave me was that in Sufism there are many paths and that ordinary people use zikrs to connect with God, but Navoi, the author of the song text was writing to God then and that it was a Sufi thing. As far as I understand it, Sufism aims for a connection with God which often sounds somewhat romatic, but is supposed to be more tangible, hence the zikrs which involve what are sometimes quite harsh and jarring repetitive movements to bring practicioners into trance or into a closer connection with god. These movements are usually accompanied by a reciting of the names of God from the Qur’an. The whirling dervishes that have gained reknown in the US and Europe for their graceful spinning sufi practice are Turkish. Central Asian sufi practice, from what I’ve seen, is much more jarring and the exhortations of god’s names are done whith big breathy exhalations. I’ve never known quite how to connect these practices with the court music that I’m studying. I think it may well only be the texts that are the link, though there may well be a musical connection as well.
The other topic that came up in discussion today was about how the canon is maintained. We have talked some about how she is having me play things different from the written versions that Yunus Rajabi published in the 50s. Malika opa mentioned that performance of this genre always passes from teach to student, and that she plays with Farkhiddin’s version, but there are also pieces of herself that she’s added. This means that it is possible for the tradition to change quite a bit with the generations, but it still gets passed down from teacher to student as it has for centuries. When I asked about the big differences between her version and the Rajabi version, in addition to the teacher-student variation issue, she also mentioned that Rajabi hurried to publish those volumes, collecting everything when he was 70 and 80 before he died, and she thanks him for doing that. However, there are differences in how she performs the maqom now, and that isn’t a mistake. She has emphasized the fact that these variations are not mistakes quite a bit lately, and I wonder if this stems from a more hard core conservative interpretation that was pushed at somepoint. Levin seems to mentioned this conservatism in his association with the conservatory in the late 70s. Right now, Malika opa seems to be trying to express the Shashmaqom as a canonized, but nonetheless flexible repertoire.
