Composer, tar and tanbur player and music researcher Farid Elhami has released a tanbur album that includes a total of 183 ancient and contemporary pieces.
The album, ‘Millennium of Tanbur’ is indeed the fruit of 15 years of hard work, patience, selfless effort and extensive research into maqams which are scales or modes common in traditional music.
All the tracks are played by Elhami who also has sung the vocal pieces of the album. Some of the compositions come in different variations, according to the Persian website of Musiceiranian.ir.
Other vocalists along with Elhami are Foroud Khamoushian, Navid Qazvine’i, Touraj Alian and Ramtin Kakavandi.
Millennium of Tanbur comes in eight DVDs. The tracks are also available online at Navaak.com.
Elhami was born in Sahneh, Kermanshah Province. He is the grandson of tanbur virtuoso Seyyed Ayyaz Qazvine’i. When he was seven, he started playing the setar and soon learnt to play tanbur under the tutelage of his grandfather. He is the founder and leader of Ferdowsi traditional ensemble.
Tanbur is said to be one of the oldest stringed instruments, dating back 2,500 years ago. Historians do not have a consensus on the exact origins of Kurdish or Iranian tanbur. The first mention of tanbur is in ancient Babylonian documents.
It is also documented on Egyptian bas-reliefs indicating that the instrument was in use in the 26th dynasty of Egypt (600 BC). Ancient Greeks named it the pandoura, according to Tanbursociety.com.
The instrument is also known to have been used in the Sassanid royal court (224–651 AD).
Poet and spiritual leader Shah Khoshin from Lorestan helped popularize tanbur among Kurds in the 12th century. The Kurdish tanbur and its melodies were used in spiritual gatherings and meditations since the 14th century.
Up to the 20th century, the instrument was considered so sacred that it was not played for non-spiritual purposes. Its melodies and maqams were so well guarded that they were only passed down from master to disciple.
