(Music of Mazandaran)
Composed by: Ahmad Mohsenpur
Vocale: Nurollah Alizade
Vocal music, traditionally, is played without accompaniment especially in the central and western parts of Mazandaran. However, accompanying with laleva or kamanche is not totally obsolete. In the eastern parts dotar takes the role of accompaniment. The most prominent Mazandarani chants are Amiri, Katuli, Kelehal, Taleba, Najma and Haqqani (Sanam). In the west, Katuli is replaced by Valgeh-Sari and in the east Harayi is added to the principle repertoire. With the exception of Taleba, all these chants are metrically free and are coupled together, e.g. Amiri-Taleba, Najma-Haqqani, Katuli-Kelehal. Katuli, regarded either solitarily or coupled as in the latter form, is coupled again with tiny metric songs known as Kija-Jan(s). In addition to these songs, there also exists numerous metric songs with narrative epic-historic characters that local informants (connoisseurs) call them as "Sut." The lyrics are essentially syllabic and do not necessarily follow the classic patterns of Persian prosody. Actually some of these chants, with extrinsic rootings, are performed following these patterns, e.g. Najma, Haqqani and Harayi.
The musical mentality in Mazandaran, as in most parts of the country, is alien to the concept of maqam viz. A means for classifying the pieces of the repertoire in similar modal categories. The pieces of the repertoire, either vocal or instrumental, are differentiated according to melodic and not modal criteria. Even here the term maqam is quite unknown; however in the eastern parts some small rhythmic vocal pieces are called riz-meqom (tiny maqam). Accordingly, musicologist would be able to characterize a general resemblance between the musical scale in Mazandarani music and the scale of shur in the Persian classical music. The diversity of modes, which is found in the eastern parts of the region, is derived from the alterations imposed on this scale.
Published [16/09/2009]
