As my shawm theme expands from China to shawm bands around the world (Tibet, Xinjiang, south Asia, the Middle East, north Africa, Europe), one of my favourites among a whole host of wonderful world-music CDs from the heyday of the Nimbus label (not least flamenco) is

• The music of Lorestan, Iran (1994),

with Shahmirza Morādi (1924–97) on sornā accompanied by his son Rezā Morādi on dohol drum, recorded at a 1993 concert in Paris.

Shahmirza Morādi belonged to a hereditary tradition in the town of Doroud southwest of Tehran. His early training was on the kamancheh bowed fiddle and tonbak drum. He mastered the sornā from the age of 15. He claimed that the sornā he played at the Paris concert, an ebony instrument encrusted with silver, had been handed down in his family for seven generations—the CD booklet notes their imprint on the area around the finger-holes. In north China, while I know of no wind instruments being used over such a long period, this is an evocative feature of shawms, guanzi oboes, and sheng mouth-organs that have been played constantly for even two or three generations.

Shahmirza Morādi began working for the radio in 1971, taking part in cultural festivals. After a hiatus in the early years of the revolution, his first recordings were released in 1981. Both the world music scene and the state troupes tend to pluck out particular musicians for stardom; as in China, brief biographies tend to privilege their official careers above the quotidian (but changing) local ceremonial life of the majority of such players.

While Chinese bands usually feature two shawms with drum, cymbals, and gong, and elsewhere several shawms may play together with a varied percussion section, here (as commonly in the Middle East and east Europe) we find the minimal quorum of one solo shawm and drum.

The shawm often plays instrumental versions of vocal melodies from popular epic tales. The pieces on the CD accompany dance, mainly for weddings—as ever, audio recordings can only hint at the vibrancy of such events. Here’s a video clip from the concert:

What we need now is documentaries about ceremonial life in Lorestan… Indeed, the sornā and dohol also perform a funeral repertoire, not featured on the CD; I’d like to learn more about the Ahi-e-hag cult, the chamariune melody and muye wailing of female mourners.

As in much of the world, outsiders pay most attention to the “classical” (and mainly urban) chamber genres of Iran, which are indeed wonderful too. But now I’m keen to learn about shawm bands elsewhere in Iran, such as Khorasan, Chaharmahal, Bakhtiari, Sistan, and Baluchestan, and the Kurdish and Azeri regions; and to find material on funerary practice and religious cults. There’s a whole other story to be told here of the changing customary life of local society under successive regimes.

The site mahmoor.com has an impressive discography here, notably the extensive series Regional music of Iran.

For Afghan musicking, see here.

.