Dotar: Bakhshi Olya Qoli Yeganeh
Collected & Researched by: Fozie Majd
Bakhshi Olya-Gholi Yeganeh (1916-1979)
Olya-Gholi lived in northern Khorasan, in the village of Kheyr Abad, north of the city of Daregaz, near the Torkamanestan frontier, which was then part of Soviet Russia. His father, Gholam Reza Yeganeh, also a bakhshi, started teaching his son at the age of eight, and Olya-Gholi had became a proficient dotar player by the age of fourteen. The author first met him in November 1974 when Olya-Gholi was fifty eight years old, and his voice still voluminous and expressive, was beginning to loose its former healthier quality, but he was a performer of a very high caliber, with a wide repertoire of songs and dotar pieces which he incorporated in the various versified love Romances, such as Zohre and Taher, Sayat Khan and Hamra, Gharib and Shah Sanam, or in epic tales in verse about some hero of chivalry as in the Romance of Kur Oghli, and also in moral mystic-religious texts attributed mostly to Makhtum Gholi, the renowned popular 18th century mystic poet. Olya-Gholi was at the time of our acquaintance, prone to sing mostly from the Romance of Gharib and Shah Sanam which he preferred to name Sanam Jan (dear Sanam), moving lyrical pieces of a longing nature, and also from his repertoire of Makhtum Gholi whom he revered as an enlightened being and teacher. His repertoire also included descriptive war episodes from battles led by Torkaman tribes, such as the piece Torkaman Khabare and the Ghazal of Nader, about the 18th century Iranian king, believed to have been born in the Daregaz locality, who had led vast armies across the mountain ranges in that area to march as far as Delhi.
Olya-Gholi referred to the four principal Torkaman maghams as ahang, melody or piece, and considered Eshgh Abad as the source of his music. However, rumours, then, had pointed to his training in Bokhara, but this was neither negated nor acquiesced by him, just mentioning that he had visited Soviet Russia. The vocal pieces, sung in Khorasani Turkish, had originated from written texts, but he did not possess any then, but knew them all by heart. About the appellation bakhshi, he considered this name to derive from bakhshesh, or gift, the science of performance being a gift from the invisible worlds, as a grace of God, coming to them through higher beings and saints.
The typical ornaments and vocal technique used in Torkaman music, some in the nature of a vocalize, can be best described as musical commentaries of great evocative power and sensation, and Olya-Gholi used the term jogholti, jogh meaning a noise of some sort, and also the word gheytarme, a kind of refrain, or return of some music material. To quote from him: gheytarme is of three kinds, first the vocalize of ih (eeh) repeated many times, which must be sung loudly, but also firm or smooth, as the need rises; secondly, the rendering of i ee) with pressure on the vocal chords, which has to be loud and long, otherwise it does not lie well in the throat; thirdly, the sound ha prolongated. ...
Published [06/07/2003]