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Persian Folksong Texts from Afghan Badakhshan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Mark Slobin
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Extract

This study is based on fieldwork undertaken in Badakhshān province of Afghanistan in 1968 for the purpose of collecting musical data. A summary of the basic musical styles and instruments current in the area can be found in the,author's Instrumental Music in Northern Afghanistan.

The focus of the present article is the type of Persian verse set to music by the folk singers of Badakhshān. Principally, this includes a description of the texts of the most common folksong form of the region, the felak, drawn from singers of the Faizābād (central), Darwāz (northern), Shughnān (northeastern), Wākhān (eastern) and Keshrn (western) regions of Badakhshān province.

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Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , Spring 1970 , pp. 91 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1970

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Footnotes

Mark Slobin completed fieldwork in 1967-69 in Afghanistan and Soviet Central Asia under a Foreign Area Fellowship. Research for the present article was undertaken under a Wenner-Gren Foundation post-doctoral grant. Dr. Slobin is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at School of Music, University of Michigan, and will be Assistant Professor of Music at Wesleyan University beginning Fall, 1971.

References

Notes

1. Slobin, M., Instrumental Music in Northern Afghanistan, Ph.D. dissertation (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1969).Google Scholar

2. For a recent regional study of the Persian folk quatrain, see Mardom-i Khorāsāh by Shukurzāde, Ibrāhim (Tehran: Nihad-i Farhang, 1967).Google Scholar Pashto folk poetry has its classic presentation in Darmsteter's Chants Populaires des Afghans (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1888-90);Google Scholar one important Pashto genre, the lunda'i has recently been described by a Pashtoon poet, Shpoon, Saduddin (“Paxto Folklore and the Landey,” in Afghanistan XX, No.4 1968, 40-49).Google Scholar

3. Illustrations in Slobin, 1969.

4. Cejpek, , Jiri, , “Iranian Folk-Literature,” in Rypka, J., ed., History of Iranian Literature (Dordrecht: Reiden, 1968), 607-710.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., 695.

6. Ibid., 694.

7. I am indebted to Prof. G. Windfuhr, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan, for the metric analysis of Bāz Gul's felak.

8. Masse, H., “Rubai” in The Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1936), 1167.Google Scholar

9. Slobin, M., Notes from the record album “Afghanistan Vol. I: Music of the Uzbeks,” Anthology of the World’s Music Series, 1969.

10. Dansker, O., “Muzykal'naia kul'tura tadzikov Karategina i Darvaza” in Iskusstvo tadzikskogo naroda Vol. 3 (Dushanbe: Donish, 1965, 236.Google Scholar

11. Ibid.

12. Quoted in Masse, 1936, 1167.

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