Countryside Songs (Subjects and Characteristics)

Abstract

Countryside song is regarded as one type of the Jordanian music. It gained its name from geographical area with its agricultural nature. Countryside song reflects life in village, and it is highly connected with the seasons of years (annual calendar), life cycle of human, working (seeding and harvest), ceremonies, wedding ceremonies, lamentation. In summery, countryside song forms a complete map for the existence of life in village. One of the features of countryside song is group chanting and the continuity, which links the present time with the past, furthermore, the mobility feature and the election by one group for a certain melody. These features were summarized due to what the work researcher has conducted a musical analysis for some of music forms. It was also noticed that the rhythmtic variety is an obvious feature for this sort of songs in which the rhythms are described as simple ones, 4/2, 4/3, 4/4. But there are some exceptional cases for this kind of songs such as, Bayat, Sikah. There is one “couple” or repeated sentence or two (A, A+, A, A+B). The researcher has taken some poetic scripts and concluded that the subjects of countryside songs were mainly about love and courtship in the first level, then comes patriotism, economic status, harvest, daily working, environment, nature and the good morals of the Jordanian citizen… etc.