TEHRAN -- The Alamut Cultural Heritage Center is currently sponsoring a comprehensive project to study the local music of the region in southern the Caspian Sea near the city of Qazvin.

Examples of instruments used by the people of Alamut will be collected and the songs common in the region will be recorded in the project, which has been operational since about mid 2007.
“Over 18 hours of music and several hours of video film have been recorded and almost all modes of music common in the region have been sampled in the project,” an official of the center and regional music expert Ruzbeh Tahmasbi told the Persian service of CHN on Friday.
The samples are currently being classified and will be published by the end of the year, he added.
In the classification stage, the project is also slated to determine what types of music are used during the labor, how much of the music is performed by women, what music is sung as lullabies, and how much of the music is performed by boys or girls.
According to Tahmasbi, the lullaby common in the region is called “gahrsari”, which some parts of it is sung by men.
“This shows that singing a lullaby in this region is not restricted to women,” he explained.
“The music for labor is sung by both men and women for example ‘neshsari’ is one of the songs, which is performed by farmers during cultivation,” he added.
Alamut is a rural region, which has been less influenced by urban life than the neighboring areas.
“The electricity has only come to the region since 1988. Thus radio, television, and the tape recorder were fostered in the regions only of late. Consequently, the music common in the urban areas, including Iranian popular and traditional music, has not been able so far to displace the Alamut regional music,” Tahmasbi stated.
Professional ethics of Alamut’s local musicians have been influenced by their religious beliefs, Tahmasbi noted.
“For example, music, even at a wedding ceremony, is not performed in the villages housing a shrine of an Imamzadeh (a Persian word that refers to an immediate descendant of a Shia Imam). In addition, the local singers and musicians do not perform in front of mosques,” he explained.
Sometimes such beliefs are based upon old wives’ tales.
“The Sorna (bugle) and the dohol (dram) are very common in the region. When a musician plays a sorna, saliva flows through the instrument and drops down onto the floor. People believe that the saliva removes the divine blessing from the place where it lands. For this reason, a sorna is not played in the home, but a dohol is,” Tahmasbi said in conclusion.
The region is also home to the Alamut Castle, used as a headquarters during the 11th century by Hassan Sabbah, the founder of the order known as the Assassins.
Photo: Local musicians perform sorna and dohol during a wedding ceremony in Alamut’s Gazorkhan village.