null

Persian Folk Music: Mazandaran

Los Angeles Home of Rugs on Nov 10th 2021

Basin playing is one of the musical customs of the people of Mazandaran, which has been directly related to the domestic life of the people of this area in the past.

Mazandaran women used copper basins for multi-purposes in the last decades. They used the basins daily for house duties such as washing clothes, making pulp for cooking bread, carrying food and some light household accessories and also when they had the time or when they had an extra basin in the happy rings, they gathered together and they started playing on it with a happy rhythm which the beats and scales belong to this region. As regards that it was a women's circle, they danced the Chekosema which was the native dance.

So that, the women were the supporters of the playing basin, it played in the periods and celebrations and happy circles of the people of Mazandaran gradually and became an inseparable part of the happy music of the people of this province. Basin players who were more skilled at playing would manage part of the ceremony with their art at celebrations and weddings and if there were more than one person, they would sit around it next to each other and take turns without interrupting the basin, because not to be exhausted a lot. Sometimes two persons played the same basin.

The basin sound was also one of the important points of the musical tradition. That is, the material, size, and even the arch shape of the basin was related to its sound directly. Because of it, that may sometimes tell that someone has a better pan or basin to play.

Basin players sometimes used a saucer or small metal tray that was used as a plate in ancient times to, make a better sound out of their multi-purpose domestic instruments; in such a way that one should sit next to them and hold the saucer or plate very softly and slowly with one or two fingers so that the basin player's blows caused it to move. The basin player's blows caused the slow vibration on the basin and under the fingers of his assistant and the second sound could be heard at the same time. What this saucer or the plate was doing is similar to the tweeters' action on amplifiers and speakers today that makes music more attractive by playing tiny sounds.