Recording (on my iPad) of a staged Zar ritual from the island of Qeshm in the Persian Gulf staged during the Ritual and Traditional Theatre Festival Teheran 5th of September 2017. The syncretic zar rites, practiced by communities of descendants of slaves, merge Islam with certain spirits or ghosts or genies (or in fact Gods) brought with the slaves from East-Africa. Zar has spread all over Sudan, Egypt, around the Arab Peninsula, Southern Iran and as far as Pakistan and India. The language consists of mixed East-African languages among them Swahili plus Arabic plus in this case some Persian.
Recorded by Neil van der Linden.
