HASSAN1980-002 - ethnomusicology monograph

Kurds of Bahdinan (Bahdini Kurmanji)

Iraq - Bahdinan (Behdinan) - Dohuk - Amadiya, Iraqi Kurdistan - Near East - Mesopotamia

Play / practical

In the mountains of Bahdinan, north of Mosul, Kurdish children call the bull-roarer *badbadak* — not for its noise but for what it makes: *bad* is the wind, and *badbadak* the little wind-thing, a name that glosses as plainly as "ventilator." The object is as plain as the name: a rectangular board drilled once at one end for its cord, whirled in steady rotation. The children make them themselves. Adults do not use them, and no magical sense attaches to them at all — the whirled blade that carries the voices of the dead across half the world is here a toy named after a draught of air.

badbadak, bad, signifie le vent, chez les Kurdes de Bahdinan

badbadak - bad means the wind - among the Kurds of Bahdinan

Hassan 1980, Les instruments de musique en Irak, printed p. 47 (section III.12, Rhombe)

Object

Rectangular wooden board pierced once at one end for a cord and whirled in steady rotation; Hassan's Fig. 8 shows the rig.

Function

Children's toy, made by the children themselves; not used by adults and explicitly without magical connotation.

Map confidence

high - Amadiya (Amedi), the historic seat of the Bahdinan emirate, as the representative anchor for 'les Kurdes de Bahdinan'. Hassan names the speech community, not a village, a player or a specimen findspot; Bahdini Kurmanji is spoken across the Dohuk governorate.

Source location

Page references

printed p. 47, section III.12 Rhombe, fig. 8; glossary printed p. 218; pp. 96-97 (Tableau 27, Tableau 28)

• Toy / secular survival

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