ARTICLE
RESOURCE GUIDE TO
MAKERS AND SUPPLIERS
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
WEB RESOURCES
BOOKS & VIDEOS
THE NAME GAME
INTRODUCTION
Mention the word bouzouki, and
people think either of Zorba the Greek or G.I.
Joe’s favorite weapon. The cognoscenti might conjure images of smoky
tavernas, free-flowing retsina, and crockery flung in abandon. Some
Celtic music fans would associate the bouzouki with Irish jigs and
reels, but few would link it with bluegrass and old-time hoe-downs, and
virtually no one would make the leap to Swedish fiddle tunes, rock ’n’
roll, and jazz. But the bouzouki has found its place in all these
musical styles, and it’s popping up more and more in the hands of
guitarists.
GREEK BEGINNINGS
The bouzouki’s roots extend back to the long-necked
lutes of ancient Persia and Byzantium. The earliest bouzoukis are very
similar to the contemporary Turkish saz, and the bouzouki appellation
was probably derived from the Turkish name for the mid-sized bozouk
saz. The saz family of instruments is characterized by bowl-shaped
backs (often carved from a single piece of mulberry wood); long, thin
necks with tied gut frets; a free-floating bridge; and three double or
triple courses of wire strings. In 20th-century Greece, the movable gut
frets yielded to fixed wire frets and a standardized tempered scale,
and the long neck was wedded with a Neapolitan mandolin–style ribbed
back. The standard tuning was D A D.
A modern saz by Lawrence
Nyberg.
The history of the bouzouki is forever entwined with rembetika,
the highly improvised Greek music often compared with American blues.
The rembetik culture bloomed in the underworld of
prisons and hashish dens in the port cities of the Aegean Sea and
western Asia Minor in the early 1900s, reaching its zenith in the years
between the world wars. A typical early ensemble might have included a
singer, two or more bouzoukis playing melody and simple chords, and a
tiny version of the bouzouki called the baglama providing a staccato
rhythm accompaniment. The songs, with lyrics about drugs, hookers,
money, love, and death, were based on a variety of ancient modes and
traditional dance rhythms, and they were characterized by expressive
improvised introductions called taxims, impassioned
singing, and bouzouki breaks between verses. Among the most influential
of early players--or rembetes--were Márkos
Vamvakáris and Ioannis Papaioannou.
Eventually rembetika’s roughneck
reputation softened and the bouzouki entered the mainstream--partly due
to a fine player and prolific composer named Vassilis Tsitsánis.
Tsitsánis fused the old dance rhythms with more elaborate chord
progressions and a westernized harmonic sensibility, and his lyrics had
a more conventional appeal than the rough-hewn tales of the earlier
artists. Tsitsánis became the first national star of the bouzouki and
made the instrument socially acceptable. When he died in 1983, 200,000
mourners brandishing bouzoukis and baglamas filled the streets of
Athens. Among the many virtuosos who followed in his wake was Manis
Hiotis, who added a fourth course of strings to the bouzouki and
changed its tuning to C F A D (like the first four strings of a guitar
tuned down a step). The new arrangement allowed a greater range and
flexibility and fostered the evolution of a showier style.
THE IRISH CONNECTION
Johnny Moynihan introduced the bouzouki into Irish
music in 1966 when a friend sold him an instrument he’d brought home
from a Greek holiday. Moynihan retuned the instrument and began using
it at gigs at the Enda Hotel in Galway with Andy Irvine and others.
Irvine recalls the reception of the bouzouki as less than felicitous;
in fact he implored Moynihan to go back to the mandolin. Despite the
initial flack, the sound caught on, and Moynihan and Irvine were soon
playing the instrument in Sweeny’s Men. Irvine gave Donal Lunny a
bouzouki, and their experiments with multiple double-course
instrumentation became the core sound of the legendary band Planxty and
set the standard for rhythm sections in subsequent trad bands. Lunny
later participated in another seminal Irish revival group, the Bothy
Band, that also featured the bouzouki/guitar combo as a key element in
its sound.
Irish bouzouki pioneer Andy Irvine.
The bouzouki is well-suited to playing simple modal
backup, which is entirely appropriate for the traditionally
unaccompanied jigs and reels of Irish music. According to fiddler Kevin
Burke, "It was more accepted than the guitar by the tune players
because of the modal nature of the tunes. The conventional ‘folk’
guitar chords usually define quite strongly the difference between
major and minor, whereas many of the melodies don’t. The bouzouki lends
itself to ‘vaguer’ chord shapes that seem to suit the Irish music
better. This same major/minor issue is, I suspect, what led to the
popularity of D A D G A D tuning on the guitar, which allows a drone
effect to be employed."
Lunny, Irvine, and Moynihan all played four-course
instruments based on octave mandolin tuning--either G D A E or G D A D.
All three focused on accompaniment, although each carved out a unique
approach. Lunny’s style, for example, incorporated rhythmic grooves
based on strumming or arpeggiating chords, with transitional bass lines
and melodic fragments tying together sections of the tunes. Irvine’s
approach was more melody-oriented, weaving contrapuntal lines in and
around the tune.
Similar experiments melding the bouzouki with Irish
music were happening elsewhere as well. Alec Finn was fooling around
with a three-course instrument, tuned modally D A D. He developed a
rollicking accompaniment style based on a cross-picked roll
interspersed with snatches of melody line. For 25 years, his incredibly
tight duets with Frankie Gavin have been the backbone of De Danann, the
only band from that fertile period still playing today. Dave Richardson
of the Boys of the Lough was using a flatbacked bouzouki-like
instrument to play tunes in a very traditional way, doubling the melody
in unison or octaves rather than as accompaniment. Meanwhile, the
bouzouki was gaining a toehold across the Atlantic.
THE NEW WORLD
Ironically, many of the first recordings of bouzouki
music were made in America in the early years when the bouzouki’s
association with rembetika made it unpopular among
Greek record companies. American experiments using the bouzouki in
unconventional settings predate the Irish invasion by nearly a decade.
David Lindley, Solomon Feldthouse, and their cohorts in the band
Kaleidoscope were incorporating bouzoukis and sazes into their spooky
amalgam of tradition, invention, and psychedelia back in the ’60s.
Lindley grew up hearing Greek music right alongside flamenco and
bluegrass, and for him it was natural to combine the sound of the
bouzouki with everything from banjos to screaming slide guitar. "We
loved the twang," he says.
Still, it was bouzouki in the context of Irish music
that fomented real interest in the instrument. By the mid-’70s the
cream of the Irish revival scene made its way to America via albums,
concert tours, and folk festivals. The Boys of the Lough, De Danann,
and the Bothy Band all made appearances stateside, and each band
prominently featured a bouzouki in its lineup.
It is easy to understand why the instrument caught on
over here in this new context. The relatively straightforward Irish
fiddle and pipe tunes are appealing on first blush--their familiar
harmonic structures and 32-bar forms are a comfortable fit for most
American listeners. Then there’s the sound of the bouzouki. The paired
strings, relatively deep pitch, and fast decay time tend to produce a
sound not unlike the instantly appealing clang of the hammered
dulcimer, but without that instrument’s relentless drone and messy
overtones. The typical tunings are stacks of adjacent fifths and
fourths, and you can get satisfying tones from the instrument with very
little effort. Open chords sound huge and rich with a clarity difficult
to achieve on guitar, and melodic lines are sonorous thanks to the
chime of the double courses. American guitarists were smitten.
"Playing melody on the low two courses is a really
exotic sound," says Stanley Greenthal, one of the first American Irish
music enthusiasts to incorporate the bouzouki into his arsenal. "It’s
an ‘out there’ kind of sound." Chicago cittern player Joseph Sobol
calls it "instantly arresting. It’s like the combination of all the
fretted instruments with a little bit of harpsichord." To Zan McLeod
the beauty of the instrument is its clarity of timbre. "In a band with
some low end—like the bodhran in De Danann—the bouzouki sounds great,
whereas a guitar tends to be too muddy," he explains. "It’s also great
with just one other instrument—like a mandolin. You get that stringy
and twangy texture thing."
Trying to explain the sound of a bouzouki can be
tricky. While bluegrass mandolins "bark," and Martin dreadnoughts
"boom" and "chuck," the bouzouki had no real onomatopoeic terms of its
own until Roger Landes coined some new ones. Now players and builders
around the country analyze the sharpness of a bouzouki’s "ping," the
clarity of its "chorng," and the depth of its "thrum." Like "twang" and
"bark," you recognize "chorng" when you hear it.
The Irish-style bouzouki took on a life of its own in
the Midwest. Missouri native Gerald Trimble, originally a guitarist,
saw the bouzouki’s potential. "I tried to make it an instrument that
could play more than just backup. I wanted to be able to improvise,
play leads, and take the instrument to a new dimension."
In 1983 Trimble collaborated with Scottish fiddler and
producer Johnny Cunningham to make First Flight, a
breakthrough recording featuring the bouzouki—or cittern, as Trimble
called his ax at the time—playing traditional Irish fiddle and pipe
melodies. Trimble’s next project was Heartland Messenger.
"Johnny encouraged me to explore the music of Missouri fiddlers and the
Ozark musical traditions that were part of my heritage," he recalls.
The resulting album was probably the first to feature the bouzouki as
the lead voice in traditional American music.
Roger
Landes and Chipper Thompson.
Roger Landes, also from the heartland, has been devout
in his efforts to adapt Irish music to his hybrid five-course bouzouki.
"The great players all say that it goes back to the pipes, that at its
core, Irish music is wind music," he says. "My quest has been to take
that information from the pipes and move it to the fretboard." His
success can be heard on his solo release Dragon Tunes
and on his earlier work with the band Scartaglen. Landes recognized the
burgeoning interest in the instrument among American pickers, and he
thought a formal gathering was in order. He sent a message over the
Internet, and within 24 hours he had 80 bouzouki nuts clamoring to
participate. The resulting gathering—called Zoukfest— took place in
Weston, Missouri, in July, 1998. It featured a week of workshops,
demonstrations, and concerts and was successful enough to become an
annual event.
Joseph
Sobel cradles his Sobell.
Joseph Sobol is another Midwesterner who is having a
big impact on the scene. His 1999 release Citternalia demonstrates
a highly idiosyncratic method of eliciting the subtleties of Irish
phrasing and ornamentation on the cittern, a term he prefers to
bouzouki (see "The Name Game,"). "I played classical guitar as a kid,"
he says, "and I was able to adapt my tremolo technique for the
ornamental triplets in Irish music." Sobol uses a specially constructed
thumbpick plus three fingers with acrylic nails to attack his five- and
six-course instruments. "I mostly play cittern because it has
everything," he says. "You can get a frailing sound, a three-finger
sound, and a mandolin sound."
Bluegrass maven and songwriter Tim O’Brien has been
incorporating bouzouki into his American roots and original music for
years now. Like many others, his interest in the instrument was sparked
by hearing the Irish bands of the ’70s and ’80s, but he has adapted the
instrument in a personal way. "I wanted another texture, another sound
that didn’t cover up the guitar" he says. "At the beginning, I didn’t
know the chords, so I got interested in weird, simple things," he adds.
His recent CD The Crossing draws on the old sod for
inspiration, and there is bouzouki on nearly every track. "I probably
use my Kemnitzer bouzouki for about 50 percent of the music in my live
shows," he says. "I’d be lost without it. Plus it’s a conversation
piece. People are always asking what it is."
Transplanted Alabaman Chipper Thompson is breaking new
ground with the bouzouki in his bluesy roots-music ensembles in New
Mexico, particularly with his use of slide. The instrument is also
finding a comfortable niche in mandolin ensembles and can be heard on
recent recordings ranging from the radical experiments of Radim Zenkl
to the more traditional sounds of Butch Baldassari.
ENTER THE LUTHIERS
The bouzouki might have remained a curious footnote in
the history of Irish music if it hadn’t been for the active involvement
of some pioneering luthiers. The Greek bouzouki in its traditional form
requires dexterity and balance: the large bowl back demands that the
player sit cross-legged. The Irish players wanted an instrument that
could stand up to the volume and intensity of fiddles, flutes,
accordions, and pipes, and they turned to luthiers willing to explore
new territory.
Johnny Moynihan credits the first flatback bouzouki to
Irish guitar maker John Bailey, who set about trying to re-create a
Greek-style instrument but found it too troublesome to deal with the
ribbed back. His 1963 experiment was a one-off, but Moynihan has played
the thing for years, inspiring subsequent builders and players.
The first modern bouzouki designed expressly for
playing Irish music was built by English luthier Peter Abnett. In 1970
he collaborated with Donal Lunny and others to develop an instrument
with a four-course Greek bouzouki neck and a shallow-arched,
three-piece back. Abnett, who is still building today, calls his
instruments Irish bouzoukis.
Stefan Sobell, probably the best-known of the British
Isles luthiers, was the first to experiment with carved tops and backs
on a bouzouki-like instrument. Ironically, it was a Portuguese
guitarra, not a bouzouki, that got him started. "I didn’t know what to
do with it until I strung it mandolin style: G D A E," he recalls.
"When I met Andy Irvine in the late ’60s, he tuned it G D A D, and that
open tuning lent itself to accompanying songs and playing tunes. It
made a lovely sound but without much projection. About the same time I
got hold of an old Martin C-3 [round-hole archtop], which I got by
trading a concertina and a car engine to some American kids. I thought
if I could combine the big, projecting, clanging tone of the Martin
with the shape, feel, and tuning of the Portuguese guitar, then I’d
really have something."
Sobel called his creation a cittern because it
resembled the Renaissance English instruments of that name. He was soon
producing variations on that first prototype for string players all
over the British Isles. He was among the first to add an additional
pair of strings to the original four, a feature that has become a
standard option offered by most luthiers. Sobel’s instruments were
among the first to make the leap across the Atlantic, and they became
synonymous with the exciting new soundscapes of the hot young trad
bands.
Among the largest of today’s dozen or so British
bouzouki manufacturers is Roger Bucknall’s Fylde Guitars, which makes a
complete line of long-necked lutes, including bouzoukis, citterns,
octave mandolins, mandolas, and mandolins, and is unique in offering a
fixed-pin bridge on some flattop models.
Rich Westerman was among the first American luthiers
to try his hand at the modern bouzouki, but he had few resources to
inform his first designs. He was a big fan of Donal Lunny’s playing and
built his first bouzouki based solely on the photograph on the first
Bothy Band album jacket, with no specifications and without a clue
about how to string or tune the thing. The resulting ax sounded
remarkably good, and he was able to sell his output through the Lark in
the Morning mail-order house. Lark proprietor Mickie Zekley has been an
active purveyor of bouzoukis and other exotic instruments since the
early ’70s and was responsible for getting instruments into players’
hands when precious few were available. Lark still sells "a ton" of the
flatbacked bouzoukis, according to Zekley, who reckons that the demand
for instruments for the Celtic scene is still growing, as is the small
but growing interest in traditional Greek and Turkish instruments.
Another early pioneer on the American bouzouki scene
was John Stump, who built some splendid instruments for Stanley
Greenthal and other Pacific Northwest players. Stump based his design
on a vintage Gibson mandocello, although he modified the details
somewhat. Nowadays there are a couple of dozen luthiers handcrafting
modern Irish-style bouzoukis in the United States, including Phil
Crump, Rob Adams, Mike Kemnitzer, and Steven Owsley Smith.
Detail
of an instrument by Steven Owsley Smith.
California builder Phil Crump has been a guitar maker
and Martin repairman for years. "Citterns are 80 percent of my
business," Crump says. "There’s a zillion guitar makers, but what’s
driving me is my own interest in playing. I play cittern and I couldn’t
find one, so I decided to get into it for myself." Rob Adams of Trillium Octave Mandolins
notes that the Internet has helped propagate the scene and that
acquiring a once-rare custom bouzouki can now be arranged easily via
e-mail and credit card. Mike Kemnitzer says that 20 percent of his
advance orders for the next five years are for octave mandolins,
bouzoukis, and mandolas. "I think it is mostly from people seeing Tim
O’Brien playing the bouzouki," he says, "and from mandolin players who
want to round out their family of instruments."
Detail
of a Trillium.
Steven Owsley Smith is a proselytizer for the
potential of the instrument beyond its current roles. From his
converted school bus workshop in Taos, New Mexico, the incessant
tinkerer bases his archtop hybrids on American prototypes such as Lyon
and Healy, and his newest instruments show the kind of fanciful
invention reminiscent of Orville Gibson’s art nouveau mandolins. Smith
says, "I am building instruments to meet the new demand of the current
crop of players: soloists who want more ping per pound. The difference
is really subtle. You get 90 percent of the tone in any cheapo
instrument. It’s the last 10 percent that drives us over the edge and
makes us want to scream when we get it." Smith particularly likes the
freedom of expression that the bouzouki offers him. "There are no set
rules for the instrument yet, and there is an openness to new ideas,
experimental visions," he says. "It doesn’t matter if it looks like
anyone else’s instrument." Roger Landes credits Smith with making his
efforts toward idiomatic expression possible. "The instrument that
Steven made has an incredibly fast response time--much quicker than the
flattop guitar, for example--and the carved top and back and small body
size contribute to that clarity."
Among the few luthiers building the old Greek-style
bouzoukis in North America are Michael Hubbard, Kalis and Company, and
Lawrence Nyberg, who is making traditional bouzoukis and sazes as well
as modern flatback forms. One interesting interpretation of the
bouzouki is the "gittern" offered by Dusty Strings Co. in Seattle. It
is essentially a 12-string guitar with the tonal characteristics of a
carved-top bouzouki, and it makes a great instrument for the guitarist
looking for that bouzouki sound.
FACTORY INSTRUMENTS
When Flatiron introduced its relatively inexpensive
flattop mandolin-family instruments in the ’70s, an octave mandolin and
a longer-necked Irish bouzouki were included in the product line.
Flatiron bouzoukis and octave mandolins were widely distributed in
music stores and were probably the first long-necked lutes most
American musicians encountered. Flatiron was acquired by Gibson--once
synonymous with all things mandolin, including mandocellos and octave
mandolins--but the company has no plans to reinvigorate that end of the
product line at the moment. Several other big manufacturers are
offering a bouzouki option on a limited basis. Ovation, for example, is
offering an eight-string hybrid instrument as a custom order, and David
Lindley is working with Tacoma to develop prototypes for a potential
line of relatively inexpensive bouzouki-family instruments.
Among the most popular factory instruments are those
sold under the Trinity College label, imported by Saga. These are
inexpensive entry-level instruments for the beginner or casual
explorer. For the more serious player looking for a fine factory
instrument, Sound to Earth/Weber offers a full line of bouzouki and
mandolin-family instruments in both modest flattop versions and more
elaborate carved designs with a huge variety of styles and materials.
FUTURE OF THE INSTRUMENT
Ethnomusicologist and musician Chris Smith talks about
the evolution of instruments across cultures and time and likens the
diaspora of the bouzouki to that of the guitar, an instrument once
identified with a specific European tradition but now universal in its
applications. From its origins in the Greek underworld, the bouzouki is
now firmly entrenched in the Celtic music scene, and through the
influence of players like Tim O’Brien the instrument is making inroads
in the bluegrass and old-time music scenes. Bouzoukis have also been
adopted by pop and rock guitarists looking for a different sound, and
the twang of double courses has graced albums by Jackson Browne,
R.E.M., Tom Petty, and scores of other mainstream acts. Nor is the
phenomenon limited to this country. The bouzouki is the fretted
instrument of choice for leading trad bands in Scandinavia, France, and
elsewhere.
The future of the instrument may well lie in its
ancient roots. Many players initially attracted to the instrument for
its flexible role in Irish music are now exploring music from the
region that fostered the instrument in the first place. Andy Irvine’s East
Wind recording explores the intersection of Balkan music and
jazz, Stanley Greenthal has included Greek tunes on his recent
recordings, and bouzouki pioneer Gerald Trimble has delved deeply into
the ancient musics of Turkey and Persia. Joseph Sobol
sums it up nicely: "We are fascinated by that combination of
ancientness and modernity--tapping into that distant, ancient place."
Demand for the instrument keeps growing, and at the
moment, demand for the best instruments slightly exceeds supply. Still,
luthiers are making the instrument evermore available and pushing the
envelope of design, construction, and materials, just as musicians are
expanding the notion of what the instrument can do. There is every
reason to suspect that the new millennium will be chock-full of spling,
chorng, and thrum.
MAKERS AND SUPPLIERS OF
BOUZOUKIS
Peter
Abnett
63
Whitehouse Crescent
Burham NR. Rochester
Kent, ME1 3SU
United Kingdom
(44) 01634-865254
Robert
L. Abrams
Trillium Octave Mandolins
60 Mill Pond Way
Portsmouth, NH 03801
(603) 431-6056
www.octavemandolin.com
Adin
and Ekvall Luthiers
Rorvik Pl: 6070
457 95 Grebbestad
Sweden
Phone/fax: (46) 525-143-80
www.gm-trading.se/hem/instrumentbyggare/
Fletcher
Brock
PO Box 5781
Ketchum, ID 83340
(208) 726-5650.
tofletcher@yahoo.com
Roger
Bucknall
Fylde Guitars
Hartness Rd., Gilwilly Industrial Estate
Penrith, Cumbria CA11 9BN
United Kingdom
(44) 01768-891515
Fax (44) 01768-891515
www.fyldeguitars.com
Phil
Crump
187 Fickle Hill Rd.
Arcata, CA 95521
(707) 826 1164
www.pwcrumpco.com
Dio
Bersis
22-08 Crescent St.
Astoria, NY 11105
(800) 570-3446
www.diodinos.com
Dusty
Strings
3406 Fremont Ave. N.
Seattle WA 98103
(206) 634-1662
www.dusty-strings.com
Ithaca
Stringed Instruments
6115 Mount Rd.
Trumansburg, NY 14886
(607) 387 3544
www.ithacastring.com
Kalis
and Co. International
PO Box 205
Don Mills Station
Toronto, ON
Canada. M3C 2E0
(416) 948-1700
www.bouzouki.com
Mike
Kemnitzer
Nugget Mandolins
PO Box 26
Central Lake, MI 49622.
(616) 544-8140
www.mandolincafe.com/nugget.html
Lark
in the Morning
PO Box 1176
Mendocino, CA 95460-1176
(707) 964-5569
www.larkinam.com
Lawrence
Nyberg
6320 Bond Rd.
Hornby Island, BC
Canada V0R 1Z0
(250) 335-1727
www.island.net/~nyberg/
W.A.
Petersen
6119 Lafayette Ave.
Omaha, NE 68132
(402) 558-9215
zouk254@aol.com
Steven
Owsley Smith
PO Box 2922
Taos, NM 87571
(505) 776-1560
www.celticmusic.com/steve
Stefan
Sobell
The Old School
Whitley Chapel, Hexham
Northumberland NE47 0HB
England
(44) 01434-673567
www.cix.co.uk/~sobell
Sound
to Earth/Weber
2380 Finnegan Lane
Belgrade, MT 59714
(406) 388-6855
Fax (406) 388-6380
ste@avicom.net
RECORDINGS
Greece
VASSILIS TSITSANIS
Vassilis
Tsitsánis 1936-1946, Rounder 1124 (1997)
MARKOS VAMVAKARIS
Bouzouki
Pioneer 1932-1940, Rounder 1139 (1998)
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Rembetika:
Historic Urban Folk Songs from Greece, Rounder
1079 (1992)
Ireland
ALEC FINN
Blue
Shamrock, Celtic Heartbeat (1995)
ALEC FINN WITH DE DANAAN
The
Best of De Danaan, Shanachie 79047 (1991)
ANDY IRVINE
Andy
Irvine and Paul Brady, Green Linnet 3006 (1976)
ANDY IRVINE AND DAVY SPILLANE
East
Wind, Tara 3027 (1992)
DONAL LUNNY
The
Best of the Bothy Band, Green Linnet 3001 (1988)
Donal
Lunny, Gael Linn 133 (1987)
MATT MALLOY WITH DONAL LUNNY
The
Heathery Breeze, Shanachie 79064 (1988)
PLANXTY
Planxty,
Shanachie 79009 (1973)
The
Planxty Collection, Shanachie
79012 (1976)
The United States
STANLEY GREENTHAL
All Roads, Madrona
Ring 002 (1990)
ROGER LANDES
Dragon
Reels, Ranger Music 4321 (1997)
ZAN MCCLOUD
Highland
Soul, Joy of Music 001 (1992)
TIM O’BRIEN
The
Crossing, Alulu 1014 (1999)
JOSEPH SOBEL
Citternalia,
Kiltartan Road 1005 (1999)
CHIPPER THOMPSON
Am
I Born to Die, Banjosnake 002 (1999)
GERALD TRIMBLE
First
Flight, Green Linnet 1043 (1983)
Heartland
Messenger, Green Linnet 1054 (1984)
WEB RESOURCES
Han’s Irish Irish Bouzouki Homepage, http://home.hccnet.nl/h.speek/bouzouki/
Sam's Bouzouki Website, http://www.users.bigpond.com/samgard/
Lark in the Morning, www.larkinam.com
BOOKS
The Road to Rembetika by Gail
Holst, Anglo-Hellenic Publishers
Exploring the Bouzouki by
Jim Cowdery, Front Hall Records (FHR BP-1001)
(Includes cassette tape)
The Irish Bouzouki by
Niall O’Callanain and Tommy Walsh, Waltons Music Inc., PO Box 1505,
Westfield, MA 01086
(Cassestte available)
VIDEOS
The Practical Bouzouki Method, by
various artists, Kalis and Co., www.bouzouki.com/video.html.
THE NAME GAME
Making sense of the bewildering array of long-necked lute-family
instruments available to the modern picker is made more difficult by
the lack of agreement among luthiers and players about what to call
these new hybrids. There is general consensus about what constitutes a
Greek bouzouki in its traditional and modern incarnations, and the
mandola and mandocello have specific definitions within the confines of
classical mandolin ensembles, but outside of that, nomenclatural
pandemonium reigns. The identical instrument in different hands might
well be called a mandola, a bouzouki, an Irish bouzouki, a mandocello,
a cittern, a Celtic cittern, an octave mandolin, a blarge, or even a
bizzar.
The truth is that almost anyone playing the instrument today is aware
of the multiplicity of available and contested terms, so it doesn't
matter all that much. Guidelines will serve up to a point. Mandolins
and mandolas are defined by their relative sizes and their fixed tuning
schemes: G D A E and C G D A, respectively. The mandocello is nearly
twice the size of a mandola and is tuned precisely one octave lower.
After this it gets tricky, and the tag is likely to change from person
to person. If it has three or four sets of strings and a really long
neck, it's probably safe to call it a bouzouki. If it has a more modest
length and is tuned G D A E, it can be called an octave mandolin, a
bouzouki, or a cittern. There is a general tendency to call any
five-course instrument of this type a cittern, but here again there is
little agreement from luthier to luthier. When you move to six courses,
the choice becomes a gittern or a bizzar, depending on the builder,
with the latter term also applied to some four-course axes with
guitar-shaped bodies.
For more about names, click here.
