Instrumentations and Origins of “Mohini”
Sihao He
Searching for compositions that stretch beyond the standard western repertoire is something that I have always been interested in, especially the ones that carry eastern oriental influences. Although I have heard about YoYo Ma and the Silk road ensemble for a long time, I wasn’t familiar with how the music was put together or where its origins were. After a few hearings, one of the pieces “Mohini” drew my attention in particular. The instrumentation of this piece is perhaps what makes their music unique and oriental and in order to understand better how this music is put together, I find it important to understand where each instrument came from and what kind of sound and color it possess. While the complete instrumentation for the ensemble consists all of the following: Bass, Chimes, Cello, Duduk, Harp, Ney, Pipa, Rattle, Sarangi, Shakuhachi, Tabla, Viola, Violin, Vocals. One of the purposes of this Silk Road Ensemble project is that to use western instruments like violin, viola and cello along with those extremely ancient and unique eastern instruments that have been fading away, in order to bring them back. In this paper, I would like to focus on the instruments that are instruments that we are most unfamiliar with and I would like to discuss and explore its instrumentation, origin and influences in the following paragraphs.
While the official translation of “Mohini” is enchantment, Mohini is actually the name of the only female avatar of the Hindi god Vishnu. The name Mohini is derived from the verb “moha,” which means "to enchant, perplex, or disillusion,”but most literally means "delusion personified." In the Baiga culture of Central India, the word mohini means "erotic magic or spell." The name also has an implied meaning of "the essence of female beauty and allurement.” Iconographically, Mohini is very simple. She is neither multi-armed nor multi-faced. She has no special symbols. She’s like normal human being, having two hands and she holds a vase of nectar in one of them. She wears colorful clothes and is covered with decorations.
This piece begins with an introduction by a male voice singing a recitative-like phrase. The male singer uses word “ya” on a relatively high register, improvising the melody which contains ornaments such as, short and long trills, small slides etc. The phrase gives me an endless feeling about the world and the unique mystery in the melodic line arouses a sense of wonder about is approaching. Then, the harp starts playing little accompaniments, breaking chords before cello as the main voice, joined by the entire ensemble, enters with the main melody. The cello uses its middle register in order to imitate the opening male voice. After this, a female voice joins in, which I personally would like to think of as the very voice of Mohini herself. What is fascinating to me is that right before the female voice comes in, the cello changes from middle register to high register, to make a bridge from a low, rich tone to a pure, sweeter, gentler tone quality. The female voice carries throughout the melody, just like the Hindu god Vishnu always stays around its people. This is the first piece in the album, and I think it plays a very important role in presenting the whole album.
Duduk: The duduk, an instrument common in Georgia, is a double-reed Armenian oboe. An instrument of a warm and soft tone quality, the duduk belongs to the category of aerophones, which also includes the balaban, an instrument played in Azerbaijan and Iran. The soft wood from the apricot tree is the main material for the body of the duduk. The reed (ghamish or yegheg) is made from the slices of a local plant growing along the Arax River. The roots of the Armenian duduk music can be traced back to the times of the Armenian king, Tigran the Great (95-55 BC). The tuning is traditionally diatonic (like most Asian instruments), though chromatic notes and microtones can be obtained by partially covering the fingerholes. The duduk is typically used in performance of popular, authentic Armenian songs at weddings, funerals, dances, and other events from various regions.
There are four major kinds of duduk, the difference between those four kinds being the difference in length, varying from 28 to 40 cm. This variety creates different tone colors, allowing it to express various moods and emotions depending on the content, or the occasion of the pieces. For example, the 40-cm long duduk, with its sweeter personality, is considered most appropriate for love songs, whereas the smaller duduk, with its lower register, usually accompanies dances. This lower register of the smaller duduk allows it to blend well with the leading melody.
Many Armenians consider the duduk as an instrument that is most suitable for expressing warmth, joy, and their history. Over the last few decades, the popularity of Armenian duduk music has faded. Unfortunately, the duduk is an instrument that is being played less and less in popular festivities, but can rather be found in staged performance of professionals.
Ney: The ney is an end-blown reed flute, one of the oldest instruments in use within the diverse musical traditions of the Middle East. The ney has been played for 4,500–5,000 years, making it one of the oldest musical instruments in performance. A feature that distinguishes it from similar instruments of other cultures is its flared mouthpiece or lip-rest, called a bashpare. This mouthpiece is traditionally made of water buffalo horn, ivory, or ebony, but in modern times, many are made of plastic or similar, durable materials. An interesting fact about the ney is the performers in Iran place the rim of the ney between their teeth in order to create a warmer and powerful sound. This unique method of performance is also adopted in performance of the Xiao from China—a very ancient, end-blown flute— which allows the tone quality of the Xiao to be similar with that of the ney.
The ney is also prominent in Arabian and Persian musical traditions. The Persian ney differs from the Turkish equivalent in its structure and performance style, as it requires the use of the teeth and tongue technique. The ney was using in this piece is actually a Turkish ney.
Sarangi: The Sarangi is a bowed, short-necked string instrument from North India as well as Nepal and Pakistan. A Hindustani classical instrument, the Sarangi is considered the most important string instrument of Northern Indian classical music and is also the most popular musical instrument in Western Nepal. Its tone quality is very close to that of the human voice, so it is able to swiftly imitate vocal ornaments such as gamaks (shakes) and meends (sliding movements). To play the Sarangi, the performer sits cross-legged and holds the Sarangi against his/her left shoulder, much like a smaller version of cello. As a cello student, I believe that the sound of Sarangi is a perfect match to the sound of cello and it plays a very important role in this piece. As I mentioned earlier, the cello is a main voice in the piece. The tone quality of sarang and cello are both very human-voice alike, and it creates a very harmonious sound in addition to all the vocal part in the piece.
As for its construction, the goatskin-covered body of the Sarangi is hollowed-out like most string instruments, and contains a wooden bar which serves a similar purpose as the soundpost inside of violins. The Sarangi has three strings made from goat gut, usually tuned a fifth and fourth apart. The arched bow used in performance has horse hair to draw sounds, and a grip that is underhanded.
The Sarangi is considered an endangered instrument because support of the instrument has slowly been fading from musical societies. The Indian sarangi is uniquely endowed with meaning, evocatively vocal sound and its vivid associations, it also conveys as part of a highly charged, ambivalent musical identity.
Shakuhachi: The shakuhachi (尺⼋八) is a Japanese end-blow flute, usually made from the root end of the bamboo, but the versions now could be made in wood and plastic. The shakuhachi is held vertically like a recorder, not like the Western flute. The name means "1.8 foot (shaku)," the length of a basic shakuhachi, but shakuhachi vary in length from about 1.3 shaku up to 3.3 shaku and it has four finger-holes and one thumb-hole. The five finger holes are tuned to a pentatonic scale with no half-tones, and a skillful player can cover about three octaves although traditional pieces rarely exceed two octaves and a fourth.
The shakuhachi is originally from China, it imported to Japan around the 9th century. Around that time, there were four Chinese monks invited to teach the Xiao to Japanese monks. Xiao is considered as the ancestor of the shakuhachi. And slowly, it began to attract interests among the people in Japan. Due to its variety of colors, richness in tone qualiti, it is considered as the very first instrument that Japanese people really liked. During the medieval period, shakuhachi played an extremely important role in the Fuke sect of Rinzai Zen Buddhist monks, known as komusō “priests of nothingness”, who used the shakuhachi as a spiritual tool. (W.P. MALM: Traditional Japanese Music and Musical Instruments (Tokyo, 2000), p.166) .
The bamboo-made flutes often time perform gagaku music, which is also imported Japan from China. What I learned from my middle school about ancient Chinese music was that gagaku was a huge part of Chinese music culture, was a type of music that was usually performed with dances in ritual ceremonies. However, the gagaku music play by shakuhachi is quite distinct from its continental ancestors, the result of centuries of isolated evolution in Japan. Around 15th century, the shakuhachi reappeared in a more japanized form which can always find its role in a diverse range of music works from solos, folk songs, small ensembles just like the silk road ensemble. Nowadays, it still remains its popularity among young people and it is one of the romantic parts of Japanese music culture.
Tabla: The Tabla is a pair of small, hand-played drums fundamental (since the 18th century) to Hindustani music of northern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh used in traditional, classical, popular and folk music and it remains in use in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. the ultimate origin of the musical instrument is contested by scholars, some tracing it to West Asia, others tracing it to the evolution of indigenous musical instruments of the Indian subcontinent. The higher-pitched of the two drums, which is played with the right hand, is also referred to individually as the tabla or as the daya (dahina or dayan, meaning “right”). It is a single-headed drum usually of wood and having the profile of two truncated cones bulging at the centre, the lower portion shorter. Skin tension is maintained by thong lacings and wooden dowels that are tapped with a hammer in retuning. It is usually tuned to the tonic, or ground note, of the raga (melodic framework). The baya (bahina or bayan, meaning “left”), played with the left hand, It is usually made of copper but may also be made of clay or wood, with a hoop and thong lacings to maintain skin tension. Pressure from the heel of the player’s hand changes the tone colour and pitch. The tuning of the baya varies, but it may be a fifth or an octave below the daya. The musician plays the tabla while seated, with the baya to the left of the daya.
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