Nowruz celebration with Persian colorful music Sunday, May 15, 2011
Iran is a multi-cultural country where more than 20 tribes live in. Though they are very different in many ways, such as clothes, language, music, dance, believes, food and etc while they are very similar in many other ways, especially in Nowruz celebration. Everybody in Iran celebrate the first day of spring season, March 21th. All the children, teenagers, youth, old men and women wear new clothes in this important national ceremony. Children generally receive many gifts from parents, uncles, aunts and etc when the whole family has gathered around Haft-Sin table.
We have the most spring songs in Shiraz city which is located Fars province. This city is provenance of two great universal poets,Hafez and Saadi, so beautiful with many flowers. The musicians who live in this zone are often interested in spring and its popular ceremony, Nowruz celebration.
The folkloric popular players and singers perform energetic songs for people to make them happy. Nowruz has special songs called Nowruz-khani that is played one week before the first day of Nowruz. When the old year is finished, popular musicians perform many songs of spring; instrumental and vocal. The songs are very different and so colorful because of the Persian tribes have their own cultures. For example we have many genres of folk music such as Azeri, Kurdish, Lori, Bakhtiyari, Shahsavan, Gilaki, Mazani, Turkmen, Kormanji, Qashqaei, Arabic, Khorasani, Baluchi, Bandari and Persian central culture.
Sorna is a common instrument among Persian tribes which is accompanied by Dohol (double-faced cylindrical drum). Moreover many wood wind instruments such as Karna, Balaban, Dozaleh, Qoshmeh, Ney Anban and Ney Jofti are used in this celebration.
By Hooshang Samani