The Stephen Blum Collection of Music from Iranian Khorāsān at Harvard University: Original Ethnographic Sound Recordings

The audio reels in the collection resulted from ethnomusicological fieldwork conducted in the northern part of Iranian Khorāsān in the years of 1968-1969 and 1972. There are 54 audio reel tapes, on 5-inch and 3½-inch reels, containing about 50 hours of recording. The main emphasis is on sung poetry in three languages – Persian [Farsi], Khorasani Turkish [Torki], and Kurmanji Kurdish. This finding aid arranges the material according to the types of performer active in the cities of Mashhad and Bojnurd, followed by recordings made in nine villages.

The analog audio cassettes consist largely of conversations, with occasional performances. The cassettes comprise the 1995 and 2006 portion of the collection content.

The main types of performer are the subject of Blum’s Ph.D. dissertation, “Musics in Contact: the Cultivation of Oral Repertoires in Meshhed, Iran,” supervised by Professor Bruno Nettl and completed in 1972 for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Musicology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The dissertation is summarized and slightly extended in Blum’s article, “Changing Roles of Performers in Meshhed and Bojnurd, Iran,” in Eight Urban Musical Cultures, ed. Bruno Nettl (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978, pp. 19-95). Several of the recordings are discussed in some of Blum’s other publications (see Bibliography and Discography, which lists published versions of individual items and is available in a separate file).

The musical genres most prevalent in the collection are: chārbeiti; ghazal; ghazal khwāni; Shāhnāmah khwāni; qesseh; dastgāh; pandiyāt; dobeiti; dāstān; mosibat; tarānah Mahalli; gharibi; sarhaddi, and naqqāli, among others.

Some of the most frequently played musical instruments in this collection are: dotār; ney; qoshma; sornā; kamānche; Caucasian tār; Iranian tār, and Zarb-e Zurkhāneh.

Frequently referenced works are: Sabz parī va Zard parī; Shāhnāmah; Chahārdah afsānah az afsānahhā-yi rūstāʾī-i Īrān [available at Harvard Harvard College Library]; Haftṣad tarānih az tarānihhāy-i rūstāʾī-i Irān [available at Harvard]; Ṭūfān al-bukāʾ [available at Harvard College Library]; Kanz al-masa’ib.

The collection also includes notebooks and printed collections of verses intended for singing, along with a street guide to the city of Mashhad.

The spoken word content in the audio collection presents recitations, conversations and interviews.

Note to Users:

For the purpose of this finding aid, the transliterations for subject and index terms and proper names have been standardized according to the OCLC authority file, when found. Turkic alphabet characters for Kurmanji Kurdish and Khorasani Turkish have been retained.

Occasionally there are discrepancies between the spelling and dates indicated in the finding aid and on the streaming audio banner. The authoritative dates are those indicated in the finding aid proper.

As of September 2010, all 54 audiotape reels have been digitally preserved and are represented within this finding aid. Digitization of the 22 analog audio cassettes with conversations is anticipated in the near future.

A book with maps of Mashhad, Rahnumā-yi shahr-i Mashhad-i Tūs shāmil gūsheh (Aleph 12562801), is also housed with the collection.