Il Bouzouki
The Bouzouki is the classic Greek instrument that is used for typical live music evenings and popular festivals. It belongs to the chordophones with very ancient origins and its ancestor was an instrument called Panduro.
Its appearance dates back to the 3rd millennium BC and in Mesopotamia they existed since the Arcadian era. In Parthian it was a long handled luite with three double strings (tríchordos in Greek) and they were of two different varieties, one had the shape of a pear and was popular in Assyria and Persia, the other had an elongated triangular shape coming from Chechnyaand Georgia. At the fall of the Byzantine Empire it was called Bouras and with the Ottoman domination in 1453, the Turks adopted the instrument for their music calling it Tambur but it is exactly the same thing. After the Second World War, the original Bouzouki with three double strings became four double strings (Greek tetrachordoin) and achieved its popularity thanks to Manolis Chiotis, composer and great Greek bouzouki rebetiko and laiko soloist of all time. To play it you need to be skilled and virtuous as you need a particular speed in sliding your fingers over the strings especially when the rhythms become pressing and rapid.
How the Bouzouki is made
The neck is very long with 26 frets often decorated with mother of pearl and must be made of ebony wood. The soundboard called Kapaki is drop shaped and is made strictly from spruce. The upper part is mostly embellished with decorations called figures which represent floral motifs or personalized designs and can cover even two quarters of the instrument, the richer it is, the more precious it is. The hole in the middle called Rodha is usually round but can also be oval.
The sound box is called Skafos and is made up of several rosewood or walnut staves joined together. The more wooden strips there are, on average ranging from 20 to 60, the better the acoustics of the sound will be.As we said before, the strings are four double but some models reflect the old three double instruments. They are all tuned with D-A-F-C for the tetrachord and D-A-D for the trichord. The choice of tuning is however a free choice on the part of the musician.
From the Bouzoki other instruments were born such as the very similar Baglamas of Turkish origin with a very long neck between 50 and 60 cm and a pear shaped sound box. It has three pairs of strings tuned with D-A-D and an octave higher where the higher pairs are simultaneous while the lower ones are in the same octave. To play it you need a plectrum which gives the sound a metallic noise.The Baglamas was much loved by the Rebetes, the displaced people of Greek-Turkish origin from the Asia Minor Catastrophe, hated by politicians of the time and by the police, forced to live like drifters in the suburbs of Athens and Thessaloniki who gave life to the Rebetiko, a very strong musicof content that talks about social problems, stories of poverty and poignant dramas of life or love.When the four-stringed Bouzouki became the main instrument for popular music in the first half of the twentieth century, the Baglamas was transformed, complete with 36 keys and reduced in size to be able to be hidden under clothes to avoid their destruction by the governmentwho banned rebetika music as it was considered unhealthy and dangerous due to its power to incite people to rebel.
If during your holiday in Greece you find a tavern or a café with live music, don't miss the opportunity to stop and let yourself be captivated by the sometimes hypnotic music that speaks of deep-rooted traditions, which no one, not even young people, want to forget, in fact it is increasinglythere is a strong belief in passing down the past from generation to generation so as to never forget one's origins.