Âmed Nesîmi Subh Dem - Medieval Iranian Song feat. Babak Daneshvar

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Oud by ‪@babakdaneshvar1‬, ney by Ido Romano, music by Abdulghadir Maraghi, vocals & arrangement by Farya Faraji. I invite everyone to visit Babak Daneshvar's channel, who graciously allowed me to use his oud recording, as he has many more wonderful oud recordings on his channel, as well as the isolated oud recording:    / @babakdaneshvar1  

This is a gorgeous piece of music from the 15th century written by Abdulghadir Maraghi, one of the most influential composers, music theorists and musicians of the Middle-East and the broader modal traditions of this region of the world. A court composer of the Timurid Empire, his works in music theory and compositions would become an essential influence in the region, albeit, ironically, more in the Ottoman Empire than in Iran in the long term. This piece was preserved mostly in the Ottoman Classical tradition, and has been one of its classics, whereas it has been featured much less prominently in Iran. To this day, almost all performances of this song will be done in a Turkish context, where it has been most preserved. This song gives us an insight into a very different landscape of Iranian music unlike the one that exists today.

Pre-Qajar era Iranian music was far more contiguous with the Turkish and Arabic traditions, featuring similar melodies, music theory and instrumentation. From the Qajar era onwards, however, Iran, at least on its Classical Music level, would develop a more or less distinct sound and music theory rooted in the development of the dastgah system, which, whilst still fundamentally similar, is a slightly distinct approach to the Maqam system that characterises the Turkish and Arabic systems. New melodic patterns and modal forms have arisen since the Qajar era that have become quite distinctly Iranian. This melody, on the other hand, and some of its intervalic features are nowadays Ottoman-sounding to modern Iranian ears, because, whilst being Iranian in origin, this Iranian character was highly influential to the development of Ottoman Classical music, and lived on there, whilst it died out in Iran after the Safavid era.

Therefore, my goal was to provide a historically-informed arrangement that would showcase the sound of Iranian music circa the time of Maraghi to the Safavid era, and hopefully showcase how different Iranian music sounded before. The oud played expertly by Babak Daneshvar, is the main instrument used here. Nowadays, in the Iranian consciousness, it's a far more secondary instrument and is associated strongly with Arabic and Ottoman music, but it was transferred to the Arabs through the Iranians at first, and was once the primary lute instrument of Iranian music. I also used a Safavid-era reconstruction of the chang (harp). Harps were once prominently used in Middle-Eastern music ensembles up to the 1700's, where they began fading out both in the Ottoman Empire and in Iran. I'm also using a dotar, which existed back then, but I swapped the metal strings you found nowadays with gut-strings, which is the more historically appropriate choice, lending the instrument a different timbre that sounds more like the Central Asian lutes like the dombra. This difference in timbre is one of the most striking differences with modern Iranian traditional music of the Qajar-era onwards: setars, tambours, dotars, tars, etc, are all stringed with metal strings nowadays, but were fretted with gut/similar materials up to the end of the Safavid era, lending the historical soundscape of Iranian music a very different character.

The mode utilised is called Rast in Ottoman Classic music, and is identical to the Western major with the exception of a microtonal third and sixth intervals of the mode.

Persian lyrics (using the Turkish alphabet):
Âmed nesîm-i sûbh-u dem
Tersem ki âzâreş kûned
Tahrîk-i zûlf-û anbereş
Ez hâb'ı bîdâreş kûned (amân)

Tenna dirna deddere dilli ney
Tenna dirna deddere dilli ney
Âh teneni ta dir ney
Teneni ta dir ney
Dir ney dir ney
Ez hâb'ı bîdâreş kûned (amân)

Âh ye le li ye le lâ
Ye le li ye le lâ dost
Ye le li ye le lâ
Ye le li ye le lâ dost
Ez hâb'ı bîdâreş kûned (amân)

Sultânıma sultânıma
Râhmet bekûn ber cânıma
Ân dem ki cân ber-leb resîd
Hem-râh'î kûn imânıma (amân)

Tenna dirna deddere dilli ney
Tenna dirna deddere dilli ney
Âh teneni ta dir ney
Teneni ta dir ney
Dir ney dir ney
Hem-râh'î kûn imânıma (amân)

Âh ye le li ye le lâ
Ye le li ye le lâ dost
Ye le li ye le lâ
Ye le li ye le lâ dost
Hem-râh'î kûn imânıma (amân)

Translation:
The early morning's calm breeze has come,
I am afeared it will trouble them (my lover).
It may trouble the amber fire of their hair,
And wake them from their sleep.

Our Sultan, our Sultan,
Have mercy upon our lives,
For I cannot take it anymore,
And accompany us in our faith