Zills in Belly Dancing

The largest contribution of Turkish culture to belly dance is a rhythmic one. Turkish finger snapping (a special two-handed finger snap) is common to both gypsies and eastern dance in general. Turkey has a history of the manufacture of metal cymbals of all sizes; the cymbal was used with warlike effect by the Janissaries, those feared mercenaries. Mr. And also notes that both the dancing boys and girls marked time with finger snapping, with the calpara clapper sticks, or metal finger castanets called ‘zil’. At some point small finger cymbals were played with a pair on each hand in the modern manner by dancers and entertainers. In fact, the most common word for modern cymbals is “zill”, which is the Turkish word for them . (The Arabic word is sagat.) They also used pairs of wooden clappers, one set in each hand, as portrayed in numerous miniature drawings. These were called “carpara” or “calpara”, which derived from the Persian word “chalpara”, meaning literally “4 pieces” . They even had an instrument similar to the ancient crotales, which was a simple set of tongs with three arms,(or zilli masa) with small cymbals attached to them. It was called egane, or ‘jingling johnnie´ In addition, Turkish music features complex and unusual rhythm patterns, such as the “asak” or limping rhythms which are polyrhythmic and asymmetrical such as 9/8, 9/4, 10/8, 7/8. The 9/8, or karslima (or kashlima) rhythm is often used as the opening rhythm for dance sets by belly dancers. Buy Zills.

(Article Courtesy of: www.bdancer.com)