ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the survey of the terms that distinguish modes of vocal performance in one region of Iran. In the Khorasani terminology of vocal performance, Turkish verbs are more combined with Persian substantives, like nala. In Khorasan, a region that includes much of what are northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan and western Afghanistan, singers draw on the sounds and rhythms of Kurmanji Kurdish and two Turkic languages–Khorasani Turkish and Turkmen–as well as on those of Persian and Arabic. Khorasani singers even use resources best suited to quatrains in performing poems with very different structures. Quatrains have pride of place in the trilingual repertoires of the bards known as bakhshi and in those of amateur singers as well. The verses sung by present-day performers, many of whom move easily from one language to another, employ a vocabulary developed in classical Persian literature and adopted by authors of verses in Kurmanji and the Turkic languages.
