Bouzouki

The bouzouki (/buːˈzuːki, bʊˈ-/, also US: /bəˈ-/; Greek: μπουζούκι [buˈzuki]; plural. bouzoukis or bouzoukia, μπουζούκια) is a musical instrument popular in West Asia (Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Cyprus), Balkans (Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria) and Turkey.

It is a member of the long-necked lute family, with a round body and a long neck with a fretted fingerboard. It has steel strings and is played with a plectrum, producing a sharp metallic sound, reminiscent of a mandolin but pitched lower. It is the precursor to the Irish bouzouki, an instrument derived from the Greek bouzouki that is popular in Celtic, English, and North American folk music.

There are two main types of Greek bouzouki: the trichordo (three-course) has three pairs of strings (known as courses) and the tetrachordo (four-course) with four pairs of strings. The instrument was brought to Greece in the early 1900s by Greek refugees from Anatolia, and quickly became the central instrument to the rebetiko genre and its music branches. It is now an important element of modern laïko pop Greek music.

The name bouzouki comes from the Turkish word bozuk, meaning "broken" or "modified", and comes from a particular re-entrant tuning called bozuk düzen, which was commonly used on its Turkish counterpart, the saz-bozuk. It is in the same instrumental family as the mandolin and the lute.

Originally the body was carved from a solid block of wood, similar to the saz, but upon its arrival in Greece in the early 1910s it was modified by the addition of a staved back borrowed from the Neapolitan mandola, and the top angled in the manner of a Neapolitan mandolins so as to increase the strength of the body to withstand thicker steel strings. The type of the instrument used in rebetiko music was a three-course instrument with three pairs of strings, but in the 1950s a four-course variety was developed and was made popular by Manolis Chiotis.

From a construction point of view, the bouzouki can have differences not only in the number of strings but also in other features, e.g. neck length, width, height, depth of the bowl or main body, the width of the staves (the wooden gores or slices of the bowl) etc. These differences are determined by the manufacturer, who in his experience and according to the sound that the instrument should make, modifies his functional elements to achieve a more piercing, deeper or heavier sound.

The size and type of the resonating body largely determine the instrument's timbre, while the length of the neck, and by extension the strings, determines the instrument's pitch range, as well as influencing the timbre. While neck length can vary from instrument to instrument, most bouzoukis have the same number of frets (27), spaced such as to provide a chromatic scale in 12-tone equal temperament. On modern instruments the frets are metal, and set into a fixed position in the fingerboard (in contrast to early instruments and the related baglama, in which frets were of gut or cord tied onto the neck, and moveable.) The quality of the wood from which the instrument is made is of great importance to the sound. For the construction of the bowl, mulberry, apricot, cherry, acacia, and elm are considered to be the best woods, with walnut, plane, and chestnut being slightly inferior. The wood must be solid and sourced from slow-growth trees. The top or soundboard should be cedar or spruce (preferably spruce) if possible, cut in one piece. The top plays a major role in the sound because it resonates and strengthens and prolongs the vibration of the strings. Another factor that affects the quality of the sound is the varnish and the method of its application. The best varnish is a natural one made of shellac, which is applied by hand in many layers in the traditional way, for both acoustic and visual effects. The neck must be of very dry hardwood in order not to warp and increase the distance of the strings from the fretboard (the action height), which makes playing the instrument more laborious. Manufacturers use different techniques to achieve this, each one having its own secrets. Many modern instruments have a metal rod or bar (truss-rod) set into a channel in the neck, under the fingerboard, which adds some weight but increases rigidity, and allows adjustment of the neck should it begin to warp.

The Greek bouzouki is a plucked musical instrument of the lute family, called the thabouras or tambouras family. The tambouras existed in ancient Greece as the pandura, and can be found in various sizes, shapes, depths of body, lengths of neck and number of strings. The bouzouki and the baglamas are the direct descendants. The Greek marble relief, known as the Mantineia Base (now exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens), dating from 330–320 BC, shows a muse playing a variant of the pandoura.