Coming from Balochistan to Play Fiddle (Suróz¹) on the Arabian Peninsula

There are many examples in many geographic settings where celebrated musicians belong to marginalized social groups with no path for economic integration into the mainstream of their surrounding society, and who subsist essentially at the whim of that society’s passion for what they do. This is very true in the Makran region of Balochistan along the Arabian Sea coastline of adjacent portions of Iran and Pakistan, where professional hereditary musicians are both essentially servants under the command of their patrons and revered, highly skilled custodians of rarified knowledge. They know things, and do things, musically, that no one else can, and yet they are outsiders to the most stable economic structures that empower the wealthy and enable farmers, laborers, bureaucrats, and merchants to feed themselves and their families within a landscape currently marked by widespread poverty and political instability. In the following discussion, we will see how the demand for this artistry extends to communities that have settled outside their home region and yet look back to it as a source for traditional cultural knowledge and expressive artistry through these very professional musicians, who extend the vivid immediacy of the Makrani Baloch cultural landscape wherever they go.

Baloch and Balochistan

Balochistan is a large, arid, sparsely populated, partly mountainous region that mainly occupies the respective largest provinces of Iran and Pakistan, hemmed in by the Arabian Sea Coast and the Helmand river valley in southernmost Afghanistan. Balochistan is a good example of a geographic region where a particular group understands itself as the principal inhabitants, who then belong to the territory, which in turn belongs to them. Baloch have been engaged in a long struggle for the right to create their own independent nation. A substantial portion of Balochistan enjoyed a high degree of political autonomy as the Khanate of Kalat beginning around 1666 until the 19th century when the British and Persian empires divided the whole region between themselves (Dashti 2017: 3). From the independence and partition of India and Pakistan until the present, Baloch have sought political autonomy while suffering from often violent repression from the regimes claiming sovereignty over this land.

Baloch culture and Baloch settlement is not confined to Balochistan per se. While a relatively small number of Baloch lead a nomadic lifestyle today, in the past Baloch nomadic communities ranged over large expanses including the Khorasan region of Iran and southeastern Turkmenistan. Baloch have also long spread across Iran's southern gulf coast and make up sizeable portions of the main coastal cities' and towns' populations. Here we shall focus on the Baloch population of the Arabian Peninsula, concentrated along the gulf coast facing Iran, from Oman to Kuwait.

Baloch and the Gulf

Over time, Baloch have rather effortlessly drifted to the Arabian Peninsula from across the Persian Gulf and the adjacent Gulf of Oman (or Gulf of Makran) on the other side of the Straits of Hormoz. While Baloch make up the majority of the population of the coastal settlements from Minab in Iran to the gates, so to speak, of Karachi in Pakistan, they are a major population throughout the Gulf region and also have historically been settled in different locations around the Western Indian Ocean, in particular under the auspices of the Omani empire that once extended from Zanzibar archipelago off the coast of East Africa (today part of Tanzania) to Gwadar (a port and peninsula in Balochistan that today is governed by Pakistan). In the Western Indian Ocean world, long-established maritime routes link South Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and East Africa and inform the social fabric and historical consciousness of cities like Mombasa, Karachi, and Muscat. With mingling and melding of different groups in these settings, Indian Ocean narratives of cultural hybridity have emerged that need to be approached critically.

Within broader questions of how art forms and notions of cultural identity are shaped by patterns of mobility and migration, the close proximity of the Arabian Peninsula to Balochistan creates a contrast with more long-distance cultural networks that are often framed in terms of diaspora. Because coastal Balochistan is so close to the coastal Arabian Peninsula, traffic back and forth has been ongoing and doesn't really require Baloch communities to leave anything behind in terms of community ties, social position, cultural performance, or material surroundings. In fact, the physical similarity in landscape and climate between coastal Oman and coastal Makran has been pointed out to me time and again by Baloch living in Oman. Films set in Balochistan are even filmed in Oman.

To what extent do Baloch actively or passively transform their outlooks, habits, and imagined worlds of belonging to conform to the urban peninsular environment? In many cases, trans-settled Baloch acquire a complete fluency in peninsular Arabic language and social decorum without relinquishing an outwardly expressed sense of Baloch identity. Speaking, eating, and dressing as Kuwaitis, Emiratis, and Omanis becomes a distinct facet of Baloch culture—being Baloch in the Arab Gulf States. Public and private spheres differ in their surfaces and additionally, men and women have very different spaces to which they have access. The music-oriented gatherings described below are exclusively male domains. Some communal gatherings such as weddings involve mixed festivities but it depends a great deal on the social orientation of the particular community.

Often Baloch households in Muscat reject, on an intellectual level, gendered segregation and gendered inequality while caving in to publicly uphold norms they privately disavow. When it comes to replicating a sense of tradition through professional musical recitation of epic poetry, only men are in attendance.

Among Baloch living in the Gulf, all sorts of measures are taken to reconstitute the mulk (the homeland, or more specifically home region within the homeland). I have stayed with Baloch citizens of the Unite Arab Emirates who maintain a traditional rural Baloch covered shelter (lóg) made of dried palm fronds (barastí) in front of their large concrete villa. Gulf citizens nearly always employ foreign laborers as servants through a notorious system known as kafala. In contrast to Gulf Arab citizens who employ domestic servants whose languages and cultures are largely unfamiliar to them, Gulf Baloch regularly sponsor Baloch from Makran as their chauffeurs, nannies, manservants, and cooks. This pattern of fixed term residencies, while rooted in social inequality, is generally less ruthlessly exploitative than the harsh treatment—reported or not—that foreign workers often receive at the hands of other Gulf citizens and their households and businesses. It is probably unique to Baloch among citizens of the Arab Gulf States that the labor they import on sponsored temporary residencies includes musicians, who are brought from Makran on lengthy sojourns, one month to several months to a year.

The Surózí Baqi and Baloch Musical Genres

Musicians based in Makran are generally of a lowly socio-economic stature. They find patronage among wealthy and powerful Baloch in Balochistan, but also crucially among Baloch in the Gulf who live in conditions of stability and prosperity relative to the precarity that marks Balochistan. In the following discussion, we shall focus on these dynamics and how they manifest in real-life musical occasions by taking the example of one such Makrani Baloch musician, who goes by the name Baqi (pronounced to rhyme with “rocky”). He is a surózí—a player of a Baloch upright fiddle (suróz)—and this vocation was inherited from his father, who himself was a famous surózí. He is from the aforementioned port town of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea coast of what is today, politically, Pakistan. Gwadar is currently undergoing major Chinese-sponsored development as a terminus for an oil pipeline and modern industrial trans-oceanic shipping entrepôt (Dashti 2017a). Because local Baloch residents have no say in this lucrative development project, and because there is no sign that they will benefit from it either in terms of employment opportunities or revenue, already-high tensions in the region are continuing to escalate.

Baqi playing the suróz

Baqi\'s repertory includes accompaniment for pahlawání śér (sung epic poetry), various festive musics (which may be grouped under the term sírí sáz), and guátí and damálí sáz—music for therapeutic, trance-oriented spirit possession ceremonies that point equally to West and South Asian Sufi-devotional practices and the zār ceremony closely associated with origins in the horn of Africa region. He plays other genres and forms, all of which would be understood to fall under the rubric of what is currently called Balochi sáz o zímal (the cumulative musical heritage of the Baloch nation), which in turn can be included under the larger umbrella concept of Balócé dódorobídag (literally "Baloch garb and comportment," but more loosely, Baloch traditional culture).

Baqi was in residence in Muscat for several weeks on a sponsored visa in 2014, not long after I commenced my doctoral fieldwork, which I conducted in annual one- to two-month chunks from 2014-2017. When I asked him his favorite style of music to play when he is not answering to someone else's demands, he said zahírók. A zahírók is an unaccompanied song that conveys a sense of surging emotions borne of longing for and separation from one’s home and loved ones. Zahírók literally means "burning" (rók) with "longing" (zahír). Instrumental renditions of zahíróks are central to regional Baloch arts such as pahlawání śér performance, where they are showcased in segments and interludes that enhance the aesthetic experience of the event through a spotlight on the extraordinary talents and emotional vitality of the pahlawán and the surózí. The musicologist Jean During (2017) and the folklorist Sabir Badalkhan (2009) look upon zahíróks, each with its own name and tonal and melodic properties, as the basis for theorizing a Baloch system of musical modes, scales, and melodies, analogous to but different from the local music theory systems found in India and Iran and across the Arabic-speaking Middle East. Many Baloch musicians are also trained in Hindustani (North Indian and Pakistani) music theory and can draw direct equivalents between Baloch and Hindustani modes and rhythm cycles. Percussive accompaniment in Balochistan sometimes uses various drums but most often relies on drone-like rhythmic strumming patterns called panjags, which are played on a long-necked lute called a tambúrag.

Baqi in Muscat

In order to understand the scope of Baqi's musical skill and knowledge and why it should be accorded great significance by Baloch individuals and communities both in Balochistan and in Oman, we should look at a few examples. In the first, he gives a sense of the zahírók called Aśrap-e Durra. Listen for the strained intonation in the upper registers, like someone singing while overcome with emotion and not quite being able to hit notes precisely. And listen also for the calmer, more reassuring notes he lands on when the melodies descend into a lower pitch range.

Example 1: Ashrap Durra

In the second example, he demonstrates a guátí melody. He was showing me how different melodies would be performed in a spirit possession ceremony till the patient (guátí) or their inhabiting spirit (guát—literally “wind”) responded as desired, by the guátí becoming entranced (por). Note the repetitive, propulsive nature of this piece in contrast with the preceding example.

Example 2

These illustrations were performed for the benefit of myself, a foreign researcher, during afternoon meetings at the home of the patron who sponsored his visit. The patron, an airport refueling technician by trade, is a poet and champion of Baloch cultural life in Muscat. Like virtually all accomplished surózís, Baqi is a hereditary musician of the Lodi/Domb group. The reader may well be asking, aside from giving private demonstrations of zahíróks and guátí melodies, what was Baqi actually doing during this sponsored month-long visit to Muscat?

Baqi, for the duration of his presence, was available to Omani Baloch for a variety of purposes. The actual premise for his visit was that a Baloch poet (airplane refueling technician by trade) named Mambaksh Bizenjo and members of the Baloch Literary Council (Balócé Adabí Majles—BAM) had sought to arrange an evening of pahlawání śér featuring the renowned pahlawán Mullah Saleh and Baqi was enlisted to accompany him during this performance. Baqi arrived about two weeks before Mullah Saleh, whose exact date of arrival was not known in advance except in terms of possible days where he might catch a plane from Turbat or Gwadar to Muscat. During this period, Baqi attended small-scale gatherings where he accompanied temporarily resident singers of contemporary Baloch poetry—younger musicians with whose customary harmonium and nár (double-headed drum) accompaniment Baqi accommodated as best he could. He also made himself available to amateur music practitioners, one of these a fairly skilled player of the suróz who relished Baqi's presence as a master to emulate, while in another case he accompanied a series of amateur interpreters of pahlawání śér, some Omani Baloch and others Emirati Baloch at a modestly publicized gathering at a "farm" (Baloch, bag).

The main event itself was held at this same bag—an agricultural facility used occasionally to host social events in an inland, mostly nonresidential portion of Muscat's expanding, sprawl where it elides with the neighboring coastal town of Barka. It is an area of lonely, cramped guest laborers' encampments, dark roads, and dense palm groves. The evening was an impressively multidimensional manifestation of Baloch transnationalism. I had already observed that there were competing visions of how Baloch cultural selfhood could be best expressed in the service of national cohesion. Performances centering the pahlawán and the surózí privilege custodians and interpreters of a cultural heritage that point to rural life and earlier phases of subsistence, social hierarchy, and material culture. Singers whose style is more contemporary and urban serve as platforms for contemporary poets and their commitment to a pan-regional, anti-imperialist ideology, exemplified by the Baloch Students' Organization and writers and intellectuals versed in South Asian literary modernism and global cultures of political activism. One contingent of Muscat-based Baloch cultural activists had sponsored the visits of Mullah Saleh and Baqi. Another contingent were actively hosting Bashir Bedar, a renowned contemporary poet who had come from Makran. In part owing to the time frames they were working with, they decided to set up a single monumental night of Baloch culture, presented by BAM. A stage was erected with the colors of the Omani flag providing a backdrop for a large, printed banner reading: "A Baloch gathering to honor the Baloch language's most renowned poet and literary figure Waja Bashir Bedar and the most sweet-voiced Baloch classical singer Waja Mulla Saleh."

The evening began with a muśáira (poetry salon), where Muscat-based Baloch poets, one after the other, read or recited their work building up to readings by the two senior luminaries present, the aforementioned Bashir Bedar and the late Muscat-based Baloch poet Abdulmajid Gwadari. Throughout these poetry recitations, Baqi sat on stage and played one extended zahírók passage after another to provide an authentic Baloch ambience, without any sense that his playing was integrated with the timing and motion of the recitations. Here, at this moment in the outskirts of Muscat, to hear a zahírók performed by an accomplished hereditary musician from Makran serves unambiguously to elevate the proceedings as a manifestation of genuine, intact Baloch culture and community, rather than a gathering of Baloch lamenting their distance from their homeland and its culture.

Example 3

Baqi's contribution to this series of poetry declamations also highlights the servile role of hereditary musicians—they must adapt to the needs of their sponsors. In order to accommodate the great wealth of poetry attendees had to share (there is no shortage of Baloch poets in Muscat), the muśáira segment went on for a very long time, with a mounting sense of impatience on the part of those who eagerly anticipated a genuine and seldom-experienced pahlawání śér performance.

Once Mullah Saleh began his performance, the audience was divided between men sitting at rapt attention in orderly rows facing the state and groups of men clustered in groups facing inwards, fluidly dividing their attention between the performance and each other—two very different ways of savoring and making the most of a momentous occasion.

Mullah Saleh began a delivery of the epic Hani o Shey Murid, perhaps the most oft-performed śér of the pahlawání tradition. As is customary, he accompanied himself with a tambúrag, the aforementioned long-necked three stringed lute whose role is to provide a steady panjag. In the example, we can see at certain points he lets the tambúrag lay idle (e.g., at 0:29) or reintroduces it only passingly to establish the panjag (e.g., at 1:22). In some performances, the pahlawán may brandish the instrument dramatically. As is also customary, there was another tambúrag player present, in this case Pirbaksh from Chabahar, Western (Iran-administered) Makran, while Baqi played suróz.

Example 4

After about a little over an hour, Mullah Saleh stopped singing abruptly in the middle of section, Baqi and Pirbaksh following suit, and slid the fabric sleeve over his tambúrag and left the stage. A typical śér performance might last till dawn; now it wasn't even midnight. I received numerous speculative explanations as to what had led him to cut his performance short. Someone told me he hadn't been served tea upon arrival. Someone else lamented the lack of foresight whereby there was no way for people to change their Omani dinar bills to wads of small paisa bills to shower like confetti on the performers in response to each particularly inspired passage. Another feared that Mullah Saleh was offended by all the Baloch men gathered in introverted groups in the perimeter of the clearing or among their vehicles in the parking area. Yet another theory was that those in attendance gave insufficient evidence of properly appreciating the performance, so far removed had they grown from a deep literacy in the older phases of Baloch poetic language. Finding himself placed after a long bill of contemporary poets—a full evening's worth of stimulation unto itself—also quite possibly wore on his patience and sense that he was the distinguished performer of the event. I never felt comfortable raising the issue with him directly. That would have been easy to interpret as me demanding to know why I had been deprived of a lengthier performance.

Mulla Saleh was happy to come to Oman because he was summoned, his trip was paid for, and he was paid for his performance. Despite the bureaucracy involved, he did not have to travel a far distance—the flight from Turbat to Muscat can't have been much more than an hour. However, he maintains certain expectations regarding the particulars of his reception, which is also the reception of epic repertoire in which he is versed. In the past, it would have been more likely that the audience would judge the performers—pahlawáns have suffered severe physical harm in retribution for inadequate renditions of epic śér (Badalkhan 2001: 215). Baqi on the other hand is used to working as a session musician on contemporary Baloch studio recordings, laying down sparse suróz parts as an evocative element. He will play in various contexts and is versed in various genres. Coming to Muscat means being available for whatever activity or setting people come up with as reinforcing their ties to their mulk. In both cases, the musicians' economic reliance on this patronage is in part indicative of the dire socioeconomic circumstances in Balochistan. At the same time, the power that their mastery over these arts exerts on listeners is what lends their circuit of perambulation its electrifying current, binding Makran to Oman above and beyond simple patterns of economically driven relocation.

Comparing the video segments, please reflect on the following questions:

1. Looking at and listening to the instrument featured, the suróz, the instrumental and vocal techniques, and melodic character of the examples, what are some qualities you might single out to describe Baloch music?
2. Do you hear similarities in timbre, intonation, and ornamentation between the suróz and the voice in these examples?
3. What does this reading tell you about the social position of instrumentalists and singers in Baloch culture?
4. How does the fact that these performances occurred in Muscat as opposed to in Gwadar change their meaning in your view? Or does it matter where they take place?
5. How does this reading and its AV examples portray the relationship between musicians and patrons/audience?
6. What are some of the tensions formed around the performance of Baloch culture and identity raised in what you have read and viewed here?

Questions for music majors:

1. Were the four AV examples consistent in the extent to which they represented the concept of zahírók? If so, what commonalities were easy to identify? If not, where did you notice major differences and contrasts?
2. Are there any identifiable characteristics of melodic shape and motion that stood out in any of the four examples?
3. What sort of variations in musical delivery style and register did you observe in the fragment of the śér performance?
4. Did any particular kinds of ornaments stand out as affecting or recurring? Did their recurrence help you to perceive a firm line between melody and ornamental embellishment of melody?

References