Music of the south

The music of Iran’s southern coast, in the provinces of Bushehr and Hormozgan and on islands such as Qeshm, Hormuz and Kish, sounds unlike any other in the country. It is the music of ports and seafarers, shaped by centuries of trade across the Gulf and the Indian Ocean with the Arabian peninsula, East Africa and India. Its rhythms are driving, its drums large and many, and its dances are among the most popular in Iran. The style called bandari, from bandar, ‘port’, is now heard at weddings across the country and in the diaspora, usually in a lively six-beat rhythm.

Instruments

The most distinctive instrument of the south is the neyanban or ney-anbun, a bagpipe made from a goatskin bag with a double chanter, played in Bushehr and Hormozgan. The sorna, a loud double-reed shawm, leads outdoor celebrations with drums of many kinds, among them the dohol and the barrel-shaped dammam of Bushehr. In Bushehr the mourning processions of Muharram are accompanied by the ensemble known as sanj-o-dammam, cymbals and drums, whose deep, rolling beat is one of the most powerful sounds of the season. Fishermen and sailors had work songs of their own, sung on the boats and while hauling nets.

The people of the air

Along the coast survive ceremonies for healing those believed to be troubled by winds, bad, spirits that come from the sea or from distant lands. Those affected are called ahl-e hava, ‘people of the air’. The best known of these rites is the zar, related to ceremonies of the same name in East Africa, Egypt and the Arabian peninsula. A ceremony is led by a baba or mama who knows the winds and their songs; drums, chanting and rhythm carry participants towards trance, in which the wind is identified and appeased. Other ceremonies, such as noban and liva, are similarly associated with particular winds and with music and dance.

Much of what is written about these rites in Persian begins with Ahl-e Hava (1967), a study by the writer and psychiatrist Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi, who documented the ceremonies of the coast and their musicians. Later scholars have traced the links between southern Iranian music and the cultures of East Africa, which reached the coast through trade and, historically, through the Indian Ocean slave trade. Many families of the coast, often described as Afro-Iranian, keep traditions with African roots, and these communities are increasingly the subject of research and of their own recording and documentation.

The music of the south also crosses the water. Bushehr and Hormozgan share rhythms, songs and instruments with Bahrain, Kuwait, the Emirates and Oman, and Persian-speaking communities on the Arab shore of the Gulf keep traditions that came with them. On both coasts the music remains a sound of the sea and the port, of weddings, mourning and healing.