Galfat Shobani - Sea music from Oman
A film by Rolf Killius for the Qatar Digital Library.
The Galfat Shobani piece belongs to the Fanun Al Bahr (Sea Music) musical genre. Galfat Shobani enacts the maintenance of a larger boat (runga type). The ‘sailors’ push cotton wool between the wooden planks in order to insulate the ship. The runga sailing boat shown in the background was built in the 1950s and is one of the smaller boats of the larger variety.
Instruments used here are the small drum kaser, the large drum rahmani and msindo, the s’hal (small cymbals), the tassa (small tin drum played with sticks), and the mismar (Scottish bagpipe).
The singers / dancers / actors, a group of seventeen men, are all sons of sailors, who once worked on these ships. The bandleader is Nabhan Subait Khamis Al-Aloui, a son of the master craftsman and musician Subait Khamis Faraj Al-Aloui.
The piece was recorded during a musical event on 24/02/14 in Sur, Oman.
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
