Eastern bouzouki/baglama/saz buying guide?

[steve V. johnson]

Now that I've played an Irish-type zouk (ok, an American-type, really... <GG>) for a while I find I'm curious about what it's like to play the older, eastern Mediterranean style instrument.

I look around at the ones I can see online, but I haven't gotten a sense of how the models/makers/standards stack up...

There are quite a few on the auction site all the time, many of them just a few hundred bucks (or pounds sterling) and some for a lot more.

Is there somewhere (here?) where there is information that a newcomer can use to learn about what's what in the range of these instruments?

Thanks,

stv

[keithd]

Hi Steve,

For a little inspiration, take a look/listen over at David Lindley's website. He plays just about anything with strings, including accompaniment to his own songs on a Turkish saz - very cool. As far as picking one up...the Lark in the Morning website/store might be a starting place. Maybe there are some university music falculty there who could help get you started...?

Let us know what you find!

Keith

[catmandu2]

That big ebay seller down in Melbourne, FL has a large inventory and a very helpful website as well. I'm not sure if that was from whom I purchased my saz, a second that I got for $100, but I'm sure it's equivalent to what's out there. It's quite nice for the money.

[Danny Packer]

stv,

I know that Lawrence Nyberg has built at least one saz, which he used to have on his website (www.guitarmaker.ca). He's a good fellow and I expect he'd respond helpfully to an email.

let us know what you find out.

danny

[Tennessee Jed]

Steve

Check the forum at www.mikesouds.com

They have a message board with very knowledgeable people. Even though it is primarily an oud board there are people who know about other middle eastern instruments.

I'll be interested in knowing what you find out and what you decide to purchase. I've been thinking about a saz or cumbus myself.

[Avi Ziv]

I think the web site is www.mikeouds.com

Avi

[zoukboy]

Steve,

Check out the buzuq, Greek trixordo bouzouki and Turkish sazes on my website:

http://rogerlandes.com/instruments.html

They are all expressions of a similar idea and may help you in your search. Of course, they are each used for radically different musics but they do have a lot in common structurally and tuning-wise.

[Arto]

Thanks Roger - impressive website!

What´s the difference between laouto and lavta pictured? I can´t see if the frets are different (steel or tied)?

Arto

[vkioulaphides]

In general, Arto, and speaking of the Greek connotations of the term "laouto":

It comes in three "variants": the one from Crete, which is the largest one; the one common around the Greek islands and the mainland's coastline; and the so-called "polítiko", an abbreviation for "Constantinopolítiko", i.e. from Constantinople, present-day Istanbul.

The first two use so-called re-entrant tuning(s): whether GDAE or CGDA, the lower three courses are in octaves, the upper one in unison. These instruments were developed, quite tellingly, in the maritime regions of Greece held by the Venetians since the Middle Ages; the cross-pollination of East and West is strikingly evident on them.

The third one, called lavta/laouta by the Turks, is a much smaller instrument; it usually has seven strings (not eight, as the other ones), as the lowest course is a single string, and is primarily a solo/melodic instrument, like the oud, and UNlike the other two Greek types of laouto, which are primarily accompanying instruments, traditionally backing up fiddles (either spike-fiddles, i.e. vertically held, or da braccio, in the common, European fashion). For example, the "standard" duo instrumentation in Crete, called "companía", is comprised of lyra and laouto.

Also, the first two, being Greek (and therefore Western, European, call it what you may) creatures, have frets, either metal or gut/nylon tempered at the usual distances called for by equal temperament; the lavta/laouta, au contraire, being a true Middle Eastern instrument, has frets set at UNeven temperament, making it able to accommodate the scales of Persian and Arabic music that make up the Turkish fusion of musical elements from the Eastern Mediterranean.

What is a bit confusing in the Roger's (otherwise excellent!) website is the blurring of the lines: the instrument listed as Greek laouto, while it *is* tuned in the Cretan manner, does not look like a Cretan laouto at all: a Cretan laouto ought to have machine-heads, not friction-pegs; it ought to be equally tempered; it ought to be a far wider, larger instrument. I will post some pictures when possible, so you can see all the striking differences. Or, go to Christos Spourdalakis' website (in the Eye Candy section) and bring up his gorgeous laouto; a picture is worth a thousand words, if not more.

I could offer more information but I risk boring the unsuspecting reader(s)... #

Cheers,

Victor

[zoukboy]

What is a bit confusing in the Roger's (otherwise excellent!) website is the blurring of the lines: the instrument listed as Greek laouto, while it *is* tuned in the Cretan manner, does not look like a Cretan laouto at all: a Cretan laouto ought to have machine-heads, not friction-pegs; it ought to be equally tempered; it ought to be a far wider, larger instrument.

Great rundown, Victor!

Yes, it is confusing and I realize I need to amend the caption for that photo. My "laouto" is probably better described as a "proto-laouto" or "steel-string lavta." It is a conjectural instrument, like those being built by Dimitris Rapakousios in Athens and a few others, attempting to imagine an early laouto that was more like a lavta. It is played more as a solo or lead instrument than just accompanimental.

I have the same 27 frets-to-the-octave scheme as my lavta because I like having the choice of the other note colors that are typical in Turkish music rather than just the Western chromatic scale common on laoutos. This facilitates the playing of a wider repertoire than is common on the laouto. I chose friction pegs in keeping with the lavta idea, and I like the sound of them as well. This thing is a boomer. It is really loud and full. The body - 12 3/8" at its widest point and 6 1/2" deep - is quite a bit bigger than a lavta, approaching the size (but not the shape) of a mainland laouto but not nearly as big as a typical Cretan laouto.

Two other differences - I have the highest string tuned down to D so teh reentrant tuning is like this:


Dd
Aa
Gg

D,D

Notice that the high D string is also an octave pair - this is really unusual but I like it a lot. It has a nice sizzly tone a bit like a divan (big) saz.

Just a couple of additions to what you wrote, Victor - the lavta is gut or nylon strung while the laouto is steel, and the Cretan laouto style has a lot of melody playing in it as well as accompaniment to the lyra.

Yasou!

[vkioulaphides]

You are perfectly right, Roger! Also, I certainly did not mean to criticize your excellent website, or your wonderful, fascinating music projects; I was just adding some information regarding the laouto. Your own additions are to the point: yes, the dazzling art of especially the old, Cretan laoutieris involved lightning-speed doubling of, or counter-melodies to the lyre. Astounding, considering the 70+ cm. scale of the great, Cretan laouto!

Curiously, I don't know Rapakousios, even though I sort of "commute" betweeen New York and Athens. While I know 30-40-some luthiers in Greece, he is not one of them... I'd love to learn more about his work.

Ya sou! Cheers!

Victor

[zoukboy]

Victor,

his website is here:

http://www.dimitrisouds.com

He has become quite a renowned oud maker but also makes politiki lyra, politiki laouto, mainland laouto, bulgari and sazi. As far as I know he developed the proto-laouto/steel-strung lavta idea after a small, Turkish fretted one that Ross Daly had. A friend in CA got Dimitri's first one last year and I had mine sort of based on his, except that I had the full Turkish fretting, a larger than lavta body and neck/body joint at the 12th fret instead of the 13th, which is normal for laouto but not lavta. Mine is heavier and stronger than his, and is much louder, not delicate. My friend's is more or less in the baglama saz dynamic range but with laouto tuning.

[vkioulaphides]

Lovely instruments! Thanks, Roger! I will certainly pay Dimitris a visit next time I stop at my European pied-a-terre— who knows exactly when...

Cheers,

Victor

[Arto]

Thanks friends! LOTS of information here!

So, if I may continue my information quest for interesting and obscure Eastern Mediterranean instruments: what in fact is bulgari (or boulgari)? I think I saw one at Ross Daly´s site and it looked just like Turkish saz to my untutored eyes.

Thanks, Arto

[vkioulaphides]

Well, Arto... since "saz" in Farsi (Persian) means generically "instrument" (!), you surely realize how difficult it is to go from generic to specific terms! There is a MADDENING array of instrument-NAMES, more often than not confusingly (mis)matched with respective instruments. A notable Turkish ethnomusicologist (Mahmoud Gadji-Mihal) came up with DOZENS of sub-classifications of sazes; to the ignorant eye (like mine), they look simply like size-variants of the same, basic idea. The bulgari is just one of them...

The history of the region makes the causes plain: the Turks, driven out of their native Central Asia (by their rowdy neighbor, Mr. Djingis Hun), sweep over the Persian empire, ransack Teheran, then spread southwards to the Arab lands of the Middle East, ransack Baghdad, then westwards, swallowing up the Asian part of the moribund Byzantine Empire; then, by the 15th century, onwards, across the Bosporus to Europe, occupying the Balkans and finally brought to a halt at the gates of Vienna.

So, it is small surprise that the musical instruments of that time and place would be composite, and vaguely distinguished from one another. I would simply enjoy playing them, without getting TOO caught up with the terminology.

Cheers,

Victor

[zoukboy]

So, if I may continue my information quest for interesting and obscure Eastern Mediterranean instruments: what in fact is bulgari (or boulgari)? I think I saw one at Ross Daly´s site and it looked just like Turkish saz to my untutored eyes.

Arto,

The boulgari (or bulgari) is a Cretan form of the sazi - it is a little like the form the bouzouki took before it was morphed with the Neapolitan mandola in Piraeus around 1910*. The last folkloric player of the bulgari was Stelios Foustalieris, who died in 1992. There is an excellent collection of his music on the Cretan Musical Tradition series, called "The Masters 1920-1955," available from the Aerakis label in Heraklion. http://www.aerakis.net/

Interesting that you saw that on Ross's site. He is one of the people who has helped bring the instrument back. Ross's records and also those of Stelios Petrakis feature some lovely bulgari playing.

Unlike the baglama saz, which has 7 strings in one triple course and two doubles, the bulgari has only 6 strings.

*Early bouzouki bodies were carved from one piece of wood, just like the saz until fairly recently. Some instrument makers in Piraeus caught on to using Neapolitan mandolas as a cheap source for bouzouki bodies, taking the neck off and replacing it with a bouzouki neck, and using the 4 on-a-side tuners and 8 string tailpiece even though the bouzoukis of that time had only 6 strings. You can see this in lots of photos of the early rembetes. The 4 course bouzouki was invented in 1954 by Manolis Hiotis and has been ubiquitous ever since, but the 6 string bouzouki, called "trixordo," is now making something of a comeback.

[zoukboy]

Well, Arto... since "saz" in Farsi (Persian) means generically "instrument" (!), you surely realize how difficult it is to go from generic to specific terms!.

Victor,

I think that we can be specific about the bulgari. It's clearly a Cretan form and limited to there. Not to be confused with the bulgarija, a different instrument altogether used by tamburitzans.

[vkioulaphides]

Yes, maybe... I was responding more to Arto's implicit question of "which saz is which". As you surely know, there are names by the dozen: divan bozuk, joura, baglama... confusingly, the last term meaning a MID-size instrument to a Turk, yet a TINY one to a Greek #

The "mandolinization" of the saz came about because the mandolin had been THE popular (amateur) instrument in Greece since the early 19th century; to have been a luthier was tantamount to being a mandolin builder. Tsitsanis' father played what he called "oh, that old mandola", on which a long, bouzouki-neck had been "transplanted", as you correctly describe.

I clarify for the sake of the record, as I am Greek and a (sadly inept) fifth-generation amateur mandolinist: at the time of my great-great-great-grandfathers, living in various Aegean islands, the mandolin was THE instrument of choice, well before the long-necked instruments gained ubiquity. And that, as you know, was a primarily urban development...

[zoukboy]

As you surely know, there are names by the dozen: divan bozuk, joura, baglama... confusingly, the last term meaning a MID-size instrument to a Turk, yet a TINY one to a Greek

...and kopuz.

Yes, in fact, the root of "bouzouki" and "buzuq" is the name of one tuning for the baglama saz, "bozuk düzen."

[zoukboy]

I clarify for the sake of the record, as I am Greek and a (sadly inept) fifth-generation amateur mandolinist: at the time of my great-great-great-grandfathers, living in various Aegean islands, the mandolin was THE instrument of choice, well before the long-necked instruments gained ubiquity. And that, as you know, was a primarily urban development...

You are right about the primarily urban development of the [/I]modern[I] bouzouki, but that is not to say that prior to the "crossing of the streams" of the earlier saz/bouzouki and Neapolitan mandola ca. 1910 that there weren't bouzoukis. There were, and they were more like what we would today call a saz and were rural instruments.

Finnish musicologist Risto Pekka Pennanen, in his "Westernisation and Modernisation in Greek Popular Music," University of Tampere, Finland 1999, pp.121-137, discusses how the incorporation of Neapolitan mandola elements (ribbed body, tuning machines, metal tailpiece, chromatic metal frets) was pretty much the demarcation point between the older rural instrument and the newer urban one. It's an interesting read.

[vkioulaphides]

Yes, yes, indeed... Long-necked lutoids were in considerable abundance in Greece prior to the "mandolinization" era, and were, as you correctly say, rural, folk instruments. The fusion was also the time of the "urbanization" that led to the modern, Greek bouzouki.

Also correct: bozuk düzen, i.e. "broken order", the order of similar intervals from course to course (i.e. fifths) broken, baglama-like, replaced (as it were) by the characteristic quintaquarta (as the Venetians called it), e.g. DAD—#a perfect tuning for self-accompaniment, by the way!

There is a famous relief, attributed to Praxiteles, depicting a young woman playing a long-necked lutoid, dating back to the 4th century B.C.E. It was found #at the temple of Mantineia and has been identified as a votive token. Since ethnic Greeks came into such oracular temples from far and wide in order to make sacrifices to the common gods of the era, it is hard to tell whether the instrument speaks definitively of what sort of string instruments were played IN Greece at the time, or whether some ethnic Greek colonists, say, from the Black Sea, brought a sample instrument over to the mainland and commissioned Praxiteles (or whatever sculptor) to make the relief in its likeness. It may have been, in other words, an image brought from the Persian realm, and not typical of the Hellenic mainland.

You are therefore right: long-necked lutes were in fact known (if also rather rare) in Greece, a good 24 centuries ago. I hope you enjoy the rich history of your various, sundry, and wonderful long-necked lutes each and every time you pick/pluck a merry tune on them.

Cheers,

Victor

[otterly2k]

Thanks, Victor and Roger, for so much interesting info...

and fwiw, I love the term "long-necked lutoid" !!

[Arto]

Thanks so much, Victor and Roger. It feels so good to be in good company.

Interesting that you mentioned this Finnish musicologist, Roger. I have not heard about him or the book, but I´ll do a search for it. It´s nice to "meet" countrymen in unexpected places!

Greeting from Helsinki,
Arto

[zoukboy]

Also correct: bozuk düzen, i.e. "broken order", the order of similar intervals from course to course (i.e. fifths) broken, baglama-like, replaced (as it were) by the characteristic quintaquarta (as the Venetians called it), e.g. DAD— a perfect tuning for self-accompaniment, by the way!

Bozuk Düzen is usually translated as "broken tuning" since it is re-entrant, i.e., the pattern of intervals is "broken."

Usually it's GDA on the baglama saz. The lowest pitch is D - the middle course and the G and A courses are only 1 whole step apart. With octave doubling on the 1st (triple)course it makes for some dense sonorities. Here's how the notes lay out:

1st 2nd 3rd

AA
GG

DD


A

I find this really interesting in that the name of a saz tuning, apparently from Anatolia, became the source for the name of one of the instruments that the saz evolved into.

DAD is the original tuning of the trixordo, as I am sure you know, and it came back as the top three courses of Irish bouzouki tuning.

[vkioulaphides]

Yes, I am told that düzen means fully, literally "periodic order"; it has other applications but some are... *blush*... gynecological. I have always thought that the "broken" applied to the intervals between strings/courses; your suggestion that it means re-entrant is new to me, but perfectly reasonable.