What it means
نیانبان (ney-anban) is the bagpipe of southern Iran. The name says it: نی (ney, reed pipe) plus انبان (anban, leather bag). The instrument is a goat-skin bag with two parallel reed pipes mounted on one end and a blowpipe on the other. The player blows air into the bag, then squeezes the bag with his arm to push air through the reeds; the result is the continuous droning sound that the bagpipe family is known for around the world.
In Iran the ney-anban is local to the southern coast: Bushehr province, Hormozgan, the islands of Qeshm and Kish, and the Persian Gulf hinterland. It is one of the defining instruments of the south, with no real presence in the rest of the country.
How to use it
ney-anban saz-e mahalli-ye bushehr o hormozgan ast, dar shomal-e iran kasi nemishenavad.
The ney-anban is the regional instrument of Bushehr and Hormozgan, no one in the north of Iran hears it.
نیانبان ساز محلی بوشهر و هرمزگان است، در شمال ایران کسی نمیشنود.
mahmood jahan yeki az mashhur-tarin ney-anban-zan-ha-ye bushehri ast.
Mahmood Jahan is one of the most famous Bushehri ney-anban players.
محمود جهان یکی از مشهورترین نیانبانزنهای بوشهری است.
The African connection
The music played on the ney-anban is rhythmically distinct from the music of the Iranian interior. The Persian Gulf coast spent centuries connected by sea trade and the slave trade to the East African coast, India, the Arabian peninsula, and the rhythms of southern Iranian music (the bandari style, the zar healing ceremonies of Hormozgan) carry that history. African-descended communities in coastal Iran have been part of the region for at least four hundred years, and their rhythms shaped the dance and trance music in which the ney-anban lives. Mahmood Jahan (born 1956 in Bushehr) is the player who brought the southern repertoire to national and international stages from the 1980s on.
Where it comes from
Bagpipes are old and widespread. The Iranian ney-anban shares its basic engineering with bagpipes from Scotland to North Africa to the Caucasus; how it got to Bushehr specifically is a question of Persian Gulf trade rather than of Persian musical heritage. The closest cousins are the Iraqi mismar, the Turkish tulum, and bagpipes from the wider Arab world.
Where to find one
Almost nowhere outside Bushehr province and Hormozgan. Local makers in Bushehr city build them from goat skin tanned in the traditional way. Tehran shops occasionally stock a piece, but for a real instrument from a real maker you go south, ask in a music shop in Bushehr, and accept that you might wait a few weeks.
In our voice
The ney-anban is a reminder that “Iranian music” is plural. The north has its kamancheh and its setar, the center has its tar, the south has its ney-anban and a sound that owes as much to the Indian Ocean as to the Iranian plateau. Persian culture is wider than Tehran wants to admit.
References
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