Music of Baluchistan

The Baluch, Baloch, live across a vast arid land divided between Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, with communities in Oman, the Gulf and Turkmenistan. Their music is one of the richest in the region, shared across these borders and carried by musicians who travel between them. In Iran it is the music of Sistan and Baluchestan province, from Zahedan and Khash to Saravan, Iranshahr and the coast at Chabahar.

Instruments

The leading Baluch instrument is the sorud, a bowed lute carved from a single piece of wood, with a waisted body, a skin face and a set of sympathetic strings that ring behind the bowed melody. Its tone is rich and wailing, and it is played upright, resting on the knee. The tanburag or dambura, a long-necked lute, provides a steady rhythmic drone. The benju, a keyed zither played with a plectrum, has been widely adopted in the twentieth century; it descends from an instrument that reached South Asia from Japan, and has been thoroughly adapted to Baluch music. Drums, the doholak among them, complete the ensemble.

Baluch song includes epic and historical ballads, sheyr, sung by professional bards, pahlawan, that recount the deeds of heroes and the history of tribes; wedding songs; lullabies; and work songs. Among the most characteristic is the zahirok, a form whose name is related to a word for longing or yearning: a melody of melancholy and remembrance, often sung or played without metre, that expresses the sorrow of separation from home or from loved ones. Musicians describe it as a mode as much as a song, and it is played on the sorud as well as sung.

The guati ceremony

Among the Baluch of the coast, music is also used for healing. Those believed to be troubled by a spirit or a ‘wind’ are called guati, from gwat, ‘wind’, and the ceremony held for them is the guati-damal or similar names. Led by a healer, it uses the sorud, drums and particular melodies to bring the patient into a state in which the spirit can be identified and pacified. The ceremony is related to the zar of the Gulf coast and to similar rites elsewhere in the Indian Ocean world. Scholars such as Jean During have documented the music of these rites and their musicians.

Baluch music has been recorded by ethnomusicologists and by Baluch musicians themselves, in Iran, Pakistan and the diaspora, and it has gained wider audiences at festivals in Iran and abroad. Its masters are often from hereditary musician families, and the art remains one carried above all by teaching within families and communities, across the borders that divide the Baluch land.