Wadi Yashbum folkloric songs [Archives:2008/1178/Culture]

Nasser Abdullah Nassir Salah
For the Yemen Times
Because every society's customs and traditions are deeply rooted across time and centuries, they are regarded on one hand as an important aspect and part and parcel of its culture and heritage, while on the other hand, they are deemed an identity card and provide access to its history and civilization.

Throughout the ages, Yemen speaks for itself, remarkable for its rich legacy, notable for its invitingly strategic situation and charming nature, pregnant with a variety of considerable inheritance in folklore and creditable for being a distinguished work with its own original flavor.

Despite the fact that it may be noteworthy for one product, folklore undoubtedly has numerous aspects and types. Additionally, it is creative in that it involves aspects such as literature, poetry, dance and song.

However, folkloric song is slightly different from one place to the next merely because of its performance, which is of a particular Yemeni taste, flavor and origin.

Al-Said, a locality in Shabwa governorate's Awlaqi district, is richly endowed with folklore, including folkloric songs which remain prevalent there, endlessly handed down for generations. Many often are used at events such as wedding festivities, farming occasions, etc.

Wedding events

Women in turn sing pleasant chants and songs of pure popular melody for a bride at wedding activities, which may include the following:

Hiddan or also known as sawf is a gathering of women invited to sing while an older, more experienced woman combs and braids a bride's hair, an old fashion no longer done. It's now transformed into zagrah, which is girls gathering around a bride who sits at the center and is covered with an embroidered piece of cloth, usually green as a sign of prosperity.

Sharah is when numerous women and girls gather together and sing accompanied by a drum while two dancers dance in the midst of them.

Samrah is a gathering of women and girls who stand in two opposite two lines, moving up and down while clapping and sweetly singing verses composed by poetesses as a drummer goes around.

Hinna is a feast prepared for those attendees who are invited and support the bride with money, called rifdah, then participating in the ziffa also known as siyar, which is giving away the bride. During this time, several women accompany the bride, singing verses composed by poetesses while taking the bride from place to place inside her home and then taking her to her husband. In the past, the bride was taken by camel.

Similarly, performances for the bridegroom mostly are alike, but differ slightly. Hiddan or sawf is held in the bridegroom's presence while a barber cuts and styles his hair. Samrah, hinna and sharah are the same as for the bride, except for zamil, which is a men's activity in which popular poets attend the wedding festivities, reciting meaningful poetic verses to be sung.

Farming events

Farmers recite beautiful collections of tuneful songs during various agricultural seasons while plowing the soil and beating and crushing the earthen blocks that remain following this plowing process. In the past, women used to crush these earthen blocks with T-shaped sticks called mafageh and eventually do the sowing process.

Such folkloric songs play yet another remarkable part at harvest time while gathering crops, which is known as sirab, in addition to times of gizazih, which is cutting down stalks or grass, and libageh, which is men beating piles of wheat on level ground called wasar by using thick wooden sticks with bent handles to separate the grain from the chaff.

Other times and events

Folkloric songs not only are sung at times of marriage and farming, but also at many other times and occasions. For example, they are recited and sung during activities that include:

Girls and women picking fruit from the nabk or acacia (Christ's thorn) tree, mowing field grass, a bride coming out for the first time after being married and a group of women fetching wood at dawn for cooking. Such also is the case for manual workers, who busily engage themselves in their labors as they seek a living, not to mention the soft songs women and girls sing while grinding grain into flour using a quarn-riha, a mortar and pestle like vessel. Women – both young and old – and even children sing as they swing on a rope hung indoors, which is called m'a-galeh, during the two eids.

In former times, farmers used to sing folkloric songs while drawing water with the assistance of two oxen to irrigate their farms. Likewise, cameleers also used to sing their suitable songs in the past.

Laborers who prepare mud bricks also have their own songs. Similarly, construction workers also recite folkloric songs while building houses.

Likewise, old carpenters used to sing pleasant songs while sawing wood, some of which are “Ahl Hanatheeth,” “Ahl Saleh Al-Shibeh” and “Ahl Busit.” They used to saw the trunks of the nabk tree to make windows, doors, beams and pillars. Folkloric songs spring from conventions inherited from our ancestors. Chanted and/or sung quite impressively, they respond to various burdens, pass the time in order to help continue doing an activity, express feelings, relieve fatigue and appease workers' curiosity.

For this reason, maintaining contact with such positive customs and traditions revives a society's pride in its civilization.
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