MUNAZHAT

MUNAZHAT is a Bashkir and Tatar lyrical genre of musical and poetic art based on the melodic declamation or vocal intonation of a poetic text. “Music and songs of the Ural Muslims and their household description” by S.G. Rybakov describe M. as “an appeal to God, religious poetry”. Other sources consider it as a chanting poetic appeal to God, a secret prayer, a religious anthem, a Psalm. The origin of M. is associated with pre-Islamic beliefs and rituals. Later M. integrated with the traditions of melodized Koran reading and declamation of religious and didactic books under the influence of Oriental literature and Islamic traditions. Shakirds and mugallims of mektebs and madradad helped to spread M. The elderly women sometimes sang M. after burial rituals. M. do not tell about historic events as bayts do, they are lyrical and subjective and aim to confess or teach people. They exist in written and oral forms. According to the main topic of M. there are religious-philosophic M. (“Religious munazhat”, “Patience”, “Destiny”, “Oh, my Allah”) including those dedicated to Muslim holidays (“Kurban-bayram”, “Mavluta’s holiday”, “Friday munazhat”); M.-pondering about life and death (“Farewell to life”, “Munazhat about senility”, “Death is coming”); M. about relationship between children and parents (“My family!”, “My son  and  I”,  “About  a  mother”,  “Orphan”)  etc. M. stanza mostly consists of 4, 8-7, 10-9, 11- 12- meter. One of the peculiarities of M. metric structure is the predominance of uneven irregular meters: 7/8 and 8/8 (“Repentance”), 4/8 and 6/8 (“Munazhat of life”), 5/5 and 5/4 (“Uraza’s munazhat”) etc. M. melodies bases on pentatonic, they are chanting, moderate, contain small repetitive structures (phrases), in contrast to uzun-kuy it is almost unornamented. M. is a part of Sufiy-poets’ art. Sibay annually has held the International contest of munazhat performers since 2006. Sterlibashevo village, Sterlitamakskiy District, RB has held the “Iman nury” regional contest of munazhat performers since 2014.

N.V. Akhmetzhanova