Children's Ball Game from Western Afghanistan

As Lew and Campbell (2005) affirm, musical play is a "worldwide phenomenon" (p. 57). I came across Ye toop doram this year during a world music class I observed at a summer camp. The game song hails from western Afghanistan it is performed in the ensuing video by a group of students from Manitoba, Canada.

The song is in Farsi, an Afghani dialect, and translates to this:

Ye toop doram - "I have the ball"

Yek, do, seh - "One, two, three"

Lool-beh day - "Roll it away"

As the translation (Johnson, 2015) suggests and as is demonstrated in the video, a child is in the middle of the circle while the other students pass the ball around waiting for a chance to roll it across the circle after counting to three. The student in the middle has to avoid being hit by the ball, and if they are hit, the person who successfully hits them is moved to the middle.

A variant of this is demonstrated in the following video where multiple people are brought in the middle of the circle, and those individuals switch out while the ball is being passed.

As Lew and Campbell (2005) point out, play is an important part in a child's development, specifically in the realms of "social competence and peer-group interaction" (p. 58). Ye toop doram is evocative of many "it"-related games, such as tag or hide-and-seek, that emphasize social roles and peer-to-peer interaction. Musically it reinforces the concept of steady beat as well as a more advanced understanding of the passage of musical time, as students have to coordinate with one another to pass the ball through the empty space in between the participants on the steady beat. In this sense, steady beat becomes a group/team responsibility rather than one individual, since if one person loses their sense of time and coordination, the entire group may stumble. This responsibility is increased in the second demonstration, since when people are removed from the outside circle, individuals have to reevaluate their sense of time to ensure the steady beat is maintained over an increased passing distance.

Nettl (2015) suggests that music teachers should strive to give their students opportunities to "locate themselves in a wide cultural, historical, and musical space" while also allowing them to "marvel at the incredible diversity of the world's ideas about music" (p. 389). Paired with Lew and Campbell's (2005) assertion that children "learn of their world through the playful songs they sing" (p. 58), it is important that music teachers, especially at the K-3 level, should strive to incorporate play songs from around the world for their ability to develop crucial social skills as well as provide a broader view of the musical world in which we live.

References

Johnson, C. (2015). The world view of passing games. Retrieved from http://cake.oake.org/uploads/3/0/7/4/30742217/world_view_of_passing_games_oake_presentation.pdf

Lew, J. C. & Campbell, P. S. (2005). Children's natural and necessary musical play: Global contexts, local applications. Music Educators Journal, 91(5), 57-62.

Nettl, B. (2015). The study of ethnomusicology: Thirty-three discussions [eBook]. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Retrieved from EbscoHost.com