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| The Province shares aspects of its unique culture with other mountain areas such as the Hejaz, and, along with the rest of Saudi Arabia, owes much of its cultural identity to the nomadic and poetic Bedouin |
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Asir retains a strong tradition in song dance, with many of the local songs relating to the rhythms of daily life. For example, there are songs about the leveling and preparing of the ground for ploughing. The words describing the ritual, the rhythm allowing the farmer to do his work in a harmonious fashion. There are also harvest songs.
Other songs have been written to be sung at ritual occasions such as weddings. There are even circumcision songs, and ones that are sung before going into battle.
Once these songs, and the dances that went with them, were solely for the benefit of the people involved, but with the advent of cultural festivals, and particularly the Janadriyah Festival, people have been learning more about the rituals of their lives from their friends and neighbours.
In 1998 the Janadriyah Festival honored the women artists, poets, singers and folk dancers of Asir, with a three day women's music festival. For the first time their local traditions took to a wider stage where the distinctive rhythms and melodies were appreciated.
Women's songs in Asir are generally accompanied by multilayered drumming. Since they are usually sung at women's wedding parties, they remain an artform by and for women. The singers at Janadriyah were mountain shepherdesses, farm women and homemakers.
Like their male counterparts, Arabian women dance in groups, with occasional brief solos. Each town has its own unique dance customs, though they share some other, broader traditions with the rest of the country. For example, 'al-khatwah' is a line dance popular throughout Asir in which the women link arms and bob to the music while shifting their weight in tiny steps, sometimes adding slight bows forward and little kicks. This dance is also performed by men, but the women's version is softer and more graceful.
Other dances are more robust. One reviewer at the Janadriyah Festival described the troupe from the mountain town of Mahayil taking the audience by storm when they began a stamping dance holding small daggers. Their ankle bracelets sounding out the feverish rhythm.
Throughout the Peninsula, women's folk songs consist of simple repeated melodies overlying complex repeated rhythms that pulse steadily through songs. The shepherdess from Qahtan have a gentle melody "as long as a line of poetry" for bringing in the sheep.
Among the percussion instruments that women from Asir use are; the 'tanaka' - a rectangular date tin, open at one end with perforated sides; the 'tar', and 'tubul' - cylindrical clay drums; the 'zir ardhi', the 'tabl' and the 'zalafa'.
The women of Bishah, a town on the edge of the desert, dance in a tight-knit group to a pounding 6/8 rhythm. At the Janadriyah Festival, they carried the town flag. Some of them loosened their long hair and swung it from side to side as they hopped. This distinctive women's dance movement, found in many parts of the Kingdom, is known as 'al-na'ish' (the hair toss). For dancers with waist-length hair the effect is spectacular, as it flies around their heads in an arc - pulsing with the rhythm of the music. |
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