Jane

A'isha, I agree about belly dance starting with Badia M.

To be clearer, I'm asking specifically about the history of small, round, metal cymbals worn on the finger and thumb. I agree that large cymbals, wooden percussion instruments, castanets, and the cymbals on a string are related, but not quite what I'm trying to pin down.

Maybe I need to figure out exactly what I'm asking. Every time I start thinking I come up with more questions! Here goes:

1. Badia M's dancers didn't play metal finger cymbals while they were dancing unless in a folkloric number?

2. If yes to #1, why did she not include them? Too country? They were still played by someone in the orchestra- yes? Why not the dancer?

3. Is Baladi belly dance? Was it pre Badia M? Is Baladi what she based belly dance on? Is Baladi related to Gawazee dance?

4. Were Turks, Gawazee, Roma, or Egyptians the first to play cymbals during torso based dance? When was it?

5. Who did they get it from? Each other, or was there a common source? Does it have anything to do with the Ottoman expansion or the diaspora of the Romany people?

6. Are the Gawazee physically related to the Roma or are they genetically Egyptians on the fringe of society because of their occupation?

7. Is it because of the influence of Turkish belly dancers that cymbals are so prevalent in Americanized belly dance?

8. Why is dancing with cymbals so prevalent in Turkish Oryantal belly dance but not in Raks Sharki? Is it because of the Roma influence? Or are cymbals Turkish in origin?

9. Are there dances that are Middle Eastern & North African in origin but are not torso based that use cymbals?

10. Will finger cymbals while dancing ever become popular with Egyptian Raks Sharki dancers in the future?

Jane

Thanks, I think I'll contact her and the Zildijain family. I also need to get ahold of that Curt Sachs book, I think it has some info on zills in it. I'd like to see what his sources were.

Jane

Thanks, it's an intersting idea, I'll look into it too.


Of course, but zill you forgive me?

Aisha Azar

Dear Jane,

I may be able to help with some of the questions below, but much of my info is from years of research and ends in surmise, just as most peoples' does, because there is much that we simply to not know and can only rely on common sense to say that some things MIGHT have happened in some ways.

To my knowledge, we do not really know. Some of the later dancers did use sagat for dancing folk numbers, like Tamra Henna, in the movies, if that can give us a clue as to what was going on earlier.

MY educated guess would be that she did not include them because she did not feel like they would enhance what she was creating. We have to keep in mind that not all people could play finger cymbals for folkloric dances, either, so it would not make sense that she would do it as a way to emphasize that her new creation was separate for folkloric dances. Finger cymbals do seem to often be a part of the takht, or traditional Arab orchestra, which consists on average of about 5 different instruments, often including the sagat, nai, oud, darabouka and tar. Once you have heard a truly proficient musician play cymbals, it becomes crystal clear why belly dancers leave it to the band!! Also, it seems that when one is busy doing intricate cymbal work, it makes it pretty difficult to do complex things with the body as well. You might have noticed that when Egyptian belly dancers play cymbals, they usually stick to the simple rhythms, though there may be a couple of exceptions to this general rule. (If I don't add that, someone will surely bring up so and so who plays cymbals like an officianado!)!

Beledi is sort of like the physical basis for belly dance.They seem to share root movement concepts, but beyond that, belly dance has many elements that one does not generally see in Beledi. The posture is uplifted, the movements are much more complex, often layered one on the other, and the music conveys many more moods and feelings than Beledi, which is generally all about happy, fun stuff. Beledi is one element of belly dance, I would say. I also think that one finds similarities movement-wise in Ghawazi, Beledi, Bambouteyah, Belly dance, Shaabi, etc. These dances all come from the same place. Just like you find some ballet elements in jazz and modern dance, you also find some elements of each of these dances in the others.

I have no clue to this.

It has often happened that we can look into history and see people around the world coming up with the same concepts at about the same time. Some might refer here to the Jungian "Collective Unconscious", or to the concept of evolution, even in the Maslow's Hierarchy sense, happening in several places at the same rate. Who knows as far as finger cymbals go, though there may be some pretty good educated guesses out there!

I have read everything from they are Rom, to they are the descendants of Barmicede , to they were found under cabbage leaves, ( well, maybe under grape leaves....). I also do not know if they are on the fringe of society by choice, or if they are not on the fringe of society and we only think so, or if it is because all poor dancers are considered social pariahs.... if that is true. We have a high Rom population in my city, but they do not mingle with non-Rom very much, except they did put a curse on the city years ago. (I think it worked!!) They keep to themselves even to the point of home schooling. Perhaps if the Ghawazi are really Rom, that might be cultural on some level, but this is an opinion, not a fact.

Since we have so few real Turkish bands around here and the influences on American Oriental were many and varied, I doubt it. I have been dancing since the 70s and when I first started, most bands seemed to be Greek or Armenian or a mixed cultural bag, more than Arab or Turkish. That has changed some with time, but it is still really hard to find a great Egyptian Arab orchestra in the States.

I have no clue..... I did not think it was more prevalent during Turkish belly dance from the videos I have seen and from seeing live Turkish dance....

Well, I have seen Persian classical dances that do not seem torso based that use cymbals.

[/quote]


There's a question that we may live to see the answer to!!
Regards,
A'isha

Jane

Thanks A'isha and everyone who's trying to help!

I also found this referenced a few places on the net:
Foreman, Kelly Marie. "Zills, the Idiophone of the Middle Eastern Belly Dancer: Their History, Pedagogy, Techniques of Playing, and Role in the Context of Bodily Expression" (1994). M.A. thesis. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University.

Has anyone read this or know where I can get a copy? This should be an interesting search. I'll keep you posted on what I find, although it might take some time. Thanks again for all the info!

Update: I just wrote to the Department Head of the Kent State Music Library about the above thesis. We'll see if he writes back. Can't hurt.

maylynn

There is a theory on this: that the Rom people, upon leaving Rajasthan where they originated (this is a fact), migrated in several waves, or groups, some of them heading northwesterly through Turkey and on into Central/Eastern Europe then onwards even further north into places like the UK. Other groups took a more southwesterly route into Egypt, North Africa, then up into Spain (the Moors). Some groups migrated continually, some stayed in certain areas for a longer time, and some basically settled (as much as Rom do) in some areas (e.g. massive Rom population in Romania). Where they remained, the Rom partly interbred with the local population but generally remained in cohesive cultural groups - isolated partly due to linguistic and cultural differences but also due to persecution.

I find a lot of truth in this theory, as you can see incredible similarities in the music and dance from these regions if you look into it. However, it would be hard to define whether or not the Ghawazee are Rom or not, because of the transient and evolving nature of the people during their migration. Geographically (and historically) speaking, it makes sense that the Ghawazee have been in Egypt for a long time - so where would you draw the line that separates a Romani sub-culture into its own separate culture? I think however that it is likely they are related, if distantly. The term used to describe Romani people: 'gypsies', is after all derived from the word 'Egyptian' - however this may have been arbitrarily used/adopted for its marketing appeal!

I am particularly obsessed with this topic. A good book to read that touches on this (if I recall) is Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey by Isabel Fonseca - although this focuses more on Central/Eastern Europe. Also there are movies about this: Latcho Drom and When The Road Bends (although I have not seen the latter).

Perhaps you should see if finger cymbals are used in dances in Rajasthan? I think they may be (but perhaps by the musicians)...I've seen Rajasthani dance but cannot recall!

Also re: thesis on zills - generally Universities keep copies of theses in their archives. Try writing to that University's library.

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cathy

Dear Jane,

I hope I am remembering and accurately putting into words what my teacher Morocco has said on this subject. She’s at Raks Brittania this weekend so I can’t double check it first.

According to how I remember and interpret what she has said, finger cymbals or something like them (possibly wooden) have been identified on miniatures and drawings done by Easterners since the 1200s. A Roman general from the first century mentions in writing dancers from Cadiz “sinking to the ground dancing with quivering thighs” while playing something like castanets. Also from around the same time in Egypt, a contract was found for a “cymbal dancer” and a mention was made of a boy who fell in a well and drowned after following the sound of a dancer playing cymbals. Both Flaubert’s and Lane’s accounts of traveling in the Middle East include descriptions of dancers playing cymbals, and the 1893 Sol Bloom exhibition of what were likely Algerian dancers in Chicago, definitely played cymbals throughout their dances.

These were all Middle Eastern/North African dances and dancers. Morocco doesn’t use the term “belly dance.” I BELIEVE she would define Raks Sharki as a distinct form that began to emerge shortly before the time of Badia Masabni but I am not sure there. One thing she is quite clear on though is that finger cymbals are an integral part of Raks Sharki and that knowing how to play them very well are one of the signs that separates a polished professional from a “home dancer” or amateur (such as myself! I can barely play them standing still at this point!)

Morocco maintains that Badia Masabni herself played cymbals and very well, and that she insisted on playing them for her young dancers, while seated onstage behind them, both to keep her eye and them, and the audience. It may be that her dancers did not get to show off or develop their own finger cymbal skills as much because of this.

Again according to my memories of what Morocco has said, when she got her start in the ethnic clubs of NYC in the early 1960s, all the native Middle Eastern dancers played finger cymbals, except the few who were not able to do so well. Nadia Hamdi played them throughout her Oriental and Shemadan routines when she was in NYC. Morocco spent a lot of time in the Middle East in the 1970s (I think it was) and later and she has mentioned that in all countries where there is Raks Sharki, there were dancers doing it while playing finger cymbals, and not just for “folkloric” sections. This included Naima Akef in Tamra Henna, Soheir Zaki, Nahed Sabri, Nadia Fouad, and Shushu Amin.

Morocco has a pair of cymbals that are over 100 years old, given to her by a musician from the club days of the 1960s! They were his grandmother’s.

Morocco says that the trend in the 1970s in Egypt was for dancers to compete with each other over the size of their orchestras. Negwa Fouad had one or two men playing cymbals in the orchestra, as a sign that she could afford to pay them and didn’t “need” to do that herself. She maintains that the “fad” of not playing finger cymbals carried over to the videos from the 1970s. And that cymbals were often not used in the Golden Age movies because of difficulties in sound production and fusing it with visuals in the time and on the sets where those movies were being made.

I know A’isha Azar and others disagree here.

Zambra Mora is the form of flamenco that uses finger cymbals as opposed to castanets. (Rocky was a professional flamenco dancer before she discovered Oriental)

Also according to what I recall of Morocco’s comments, Ghawazi (which I believe translates as “invaders of the heart” but came to be associated with “dancer”) were not of Roma origin but Sinti. These are two distinct groups with their own languages, from different parts of India, who migrated at different times but who were mistakenly lumped together under the incorrect term “Gypsy.” I believe that the Ghawazi were most famous in Luxor and Sumbat. I believe that the Banat Maazin were a family of Ghawazi origin. I also believe that Edwina Nearing has written some articles that might prove helpful here about the Ghawazi. Possibly on Gilded Serpent?

As to your question “is Baladi belly dance?” Again my my teachers Morocco and Tarik don’t use that term at all, and instead call what they do (which includes both Raks Beledi and Raks Sharki) Oriental dance. But I BELIEVE they would say that Raks Beledi is a very related form that Raks Sharki came out of, along with certain other, possibly more Western-influenced elements designed to appeal to largely foreign customers in the nightclubs of Cairo in the early 20th century. Again, I am aware that A’isha Azar and probably others disagree with this and I’m not interested in rehashing it here. I don't think anyone disagrees that finger cymbals are played in Beledi.

I don’t know enough to say anything about your other questions, including the ones about Turkish forms.

Many apologies if I have mistated or misremembered anything!

Best wishes, Cathy

maylynn

Hi Cathy,

Thanks for remembering the term Zambra Mora. That's exactly what I meant.

Would be very interested in knowing some sources for the above, specifically Roma vs. Sinti, and where in India they came from, and what were the different times of migration - as far as I understand, these were ongoing waves of emigration over a certain period. I'm not disagreeing, just very interested.

Please let me know!

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Aisha Azar

Der Jane and Gang,
I have all of Edwina Nearing's writings on the Ghawazi in my original copies from Habibi, some more than 30 years ago. ( Now you see why it is so hard to get my hands on the exact info sometimes. I still have EVERYTHING from over 30 years ago!!!) Yes the Ghawazi played cymbals and so did some other dancers and ritual groups such as the Sufi, but unless I am mistaken, it seems like the question here is about belly dance specifically.
I agree with Morocco on some points and disagree with her on others. I agree with her that musicians and dancers have been playing croatals, castinets, cymbals and other such percussion instruments for a very long time. I disagree about dancers not playing cymbals in the movies due to sound issues and that all dancers used to play them for raqs sharghi. It seems like there is enough cymbal playing in the old Egyptian movies that I have seen to be able to say that sound issues might not have hindered dancers from playing them, at least not often. It seems to have been a personal decision, or perhaps the director's choice as is often the case in movies....???? We see many dancers doing beledi pieces and playing cymbals in those old movies.
Jane's question seems to be directly related to belly dance and cymbal playing. I am not sure how ancient cymbal playing, whether the Ghawazi played them, whether dancers in ancient Rome played them or how old they are related very much to her question. I am not trying to be a snot, but I am trying to keep things clear as to what we are talking about, because the original question can be lost in a flurry of information.
Regards,
A'isha

Lydia dubai

Insha Allah, this history and description of the Ghawazee dance of Egypt will be the first of a two-part article concerning public performers of dance in North Africa and the Middle East
I just gone back to the link that talks about the gawazee and that they hade instruments and aswell it says in this artickle that the dancers did not choregraphed ,but indeed played sagat when performing....so perhaps that is where the bellydancers got the idea from? ...have a nice day Lydia