Ney

The ney is an end-blown flute made from a single length of reed, ney simply meaning ‘reed’. It has no mouthpiece. The Persian ney has six finger holes, five in front and one behind for the thumb, and the reed is chosen so that it contains seven segments, or nodes. A brass ring is often fitted at the top to protect the rim. The sound is breathy and dark, with the noise of the air audible in the note, and that grain is part of its appeal.

The Persian ney is distinguished by an unusual technique. Rather than blowing across the rim with the lips, the player places the top of the reed between the upper front teeth and directs the air with the tongue. This method, known as dandani, ‘of the teeth’, is associated with the musicians of Isfahan, and it is usually credited to Nayeb Asadollah, an Isfahani player of the late Qajar period. It gives the Persian ney a stronger, more focused tone than the lip-blown reed flutes of Turkey and the Arab world.

The song of the reed

No instrument in Persian culture carries more meaning. Jalal al-Din Rumi opens his great poem, the Masnavi, with the lament of the reed that has been cut from its reed-bed and cries out in longing to return. The Persian begins Beshnow in ney chon shekayat mikonad, and Reynold A. Nicholson’s English translation of 1926 renders the first line:

For Rumi and his readers the reed is the soul, separated from its divine source, and its music is the sound of that separation. The Mevlevi order founded in his name in Konya made the ney the principal instrument of its ceremony, and across the Persian and Ottoman worlds the reed flute became the emblem of mystical longing. Many Iranian listeners first meet the instrument through this poem, long before they hear it played.

Players

In the twentieth century the Persian ney was carried from the lodge and the private gathering to the radio studio and the concert hall. Hasan Kasa’i of Isfahan (1928–2012) became the best known of its masters, celebrated for a sound that could move from intimacy to great power, and his recordings with singers set a standard for the instrument’s role in avaz. Players in Tehran and abroad have since extended its range and technique, and the ney is now taught widely, and its long, breathing tone has become a familiar sound in film music as well as in the concert hall. Related reed flutes, under names such as nay and nai, are played in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and the wider region, each with its own technique and repertoire.