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History and General Bouzouki Information
Bouzouki History :
In Ancient Greece, this instrument was known as the "pandouris" or "pandourion", also called the "trichord" because it had three strings; it was the first fretted instrument known, forerunner of the various families of lutes worldwide. The source of our knowledge about this instrument is the Mantineia marble (4th century BC, now exhibited at Athens Archaeological Museum), depicting the mythical contest between Apollo and Marsyas, where a pandouris is being played by a muse seated on a rock.
From Byzantine times it was called the tambouras. The modern Turkish Tanbur is practically identical to the ancient Greek pandouris. On display in the National Historical Museum of Greece is the tambouras of a hero of the Greek revolution of 1821, General Makriyiannis. This tambouras bears the main morphological characteristics of the bouzouki used by the Rebetes.
The Turkish Saz and the Lebanese Buzuq belong to the same family of instruments as the bouzouki. A middle-sized kind of saz is called a "bozouk saz". Bozouk in Turkish means "broken, not functioning, modified". Here it is used in order to specify the size of the instrument. It is concluded, therefore, that the bouzouki has been named after the jargon of the Turkish saz. An alternative popular etymology maintains that the word "Bozouk" was used because different tunings (the Turkish 'düzen') are required for the instrument to play in different musical scales (known as Dromoi in Greek, Maqam (pl. Maqamat) in Arabic). A tuning known as the "bozouk düzeni" (broken tuning) still exists in Greek folk music.
Following the 1919-1922 war in Asia Minor and the subsequent exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey, the ethnic Greeks fled to Greece. The refugees brought with them the music known as Smyrneika, which made use of the Arabic lute (Oud or "outi" as the Greeks called it). Soon the outi was replaced by the bouzouki and the Smyrneika style fused into the Rembetika.
The early bouzoukia were Trichordo, with three courses (six strings in three pairs) and were generally tuned to D3/D4 A3 D4. This tuning fits in well with the music of the Middle East, as an open chord is neither major nor minor, allowing great flexibility with the melody. Trichordo bouzoukis are still being made, and are very popular with aficionados of Rembetika.
After the Second World War, Tetrachordo (four-course) bouzoukis started to appear. It is not known who first added the fourth course. Possibly Stefanakis or Anastasios Stathopoulos. The tetrachordo was made popular by Manolis Chiotis. Chiotis also used a tuning akin to standard guitar tuning, which made it easier for guitarists to play bouzouki, even as it angered purists.
The Irish bouzouki, with four courses, a flatter back, and differently tuned from the Greek bouzouki, is a more recent development, dating back to the 1960s.
The Irish Bouzouki:
The Greek bouzouki was introduced into Irish Traditional Music in the 1960s by Johnny Moynihan and was quickly taken up by Andy Irvine. Soon after, the Irish bouzouki began to develop into something like its current form. Today, the Irish bouzouki is an important part of the Irish trad scene, most often (though not always) playing accompaniment, mostly a mix of two note chords, basslines, and bits of countermelody, rather than the melody. Perhaps the best known exponent of the Irish bouzouki is Dónal Lunny, who also created an electric version, known as the e-zouk.
The Irish bouzouki generally has a flat or lightly arched back (like that of a guitar or an Irish, American, or Portuguese style mandolin) in place of stave-built round back of the Greek bouzouki, and unlike the Greek instrument is usually tuned to GDAD or GDAE (an octave below the mandolin). For all intents and purposes, the modern Irish bouzouki is a member of the mandolin family, and a bouzouki in name only. However, the Irish bouzouki is distinguished from the somewhat similar-looking octave mandolin in that it has a longer fretboard and characteristic tuning. Like mandolins, Irish bouzoukis are variously made with flat, carved (arched) and bent tops. Hardly anyone uses the Greek bouzouki for Irish music today; Alec Finn is the only professional of any consequence to continue in playing one.
The typical scale length of the Irish bouzouki is 22 to 24 inches (550 to 610 mm), although some are as long as 26 inches (660 mm); an instrument in the same tuning with a scale length of 20 inches (500 mm) or less is generally termed an octave mandola (Europe, Ireland, and the UK) or octave mandolin (US and Canada).
The first Irish bouzouki was probably one built by John Bailey for John Pearse, the guitarist and author, who recalls in a usenet message to Rec.Music.Makers.Guitar.Acoustic on 16th January 2000 [1] "your mention of the "Irish" bouzouki prompts me to admit responsibility for its introduction, albeit unwittingly. Back in the late fifties and early sixties I was teaching guitar at the English Folk Dance and Song Society HQ on Regents Park Road in London's Camden Town. At that time I was obsessed with Greek music and was gigging with a pretty cheap bouzouki that I'd picked up in Piraeus. One night it got thoroughly trashed during a fight at a local pub and I took it to luthier John Bailey, who was a regular at the EFDSS and had repaired it on many prior occasions. He pronounced it not repairable and offered to build me a replacement. Since he was not able to attempt a coopered bowl-back, I lent him an old Preston English cittern to use as a model for the body of the instrument. In due time the bouzouki was finished and I started gigging with it. I found the sound somewhat too sweet for rembetica and the intonation was rather suspect further up the neck, so, after I obtained a pukka Greek bouzouki the following year - a Yianacou - I hung the Bailey on the wall as a decoration. At that time, my house was the scene of constant partying. Whether or not I was in town, there always seemed to be a wild shindig taking place, judging by the constant complaints from the neighbours- and the monotonous regularity of visits from tall gentlemen, clad in blue, with firm requests to keep the noise down. On one such evening, Johnny Moynihan, from the Irish group Sweeney's Men, took down the Bailey from the wall and started to join in the musical revelry. He liked the instrument so much that, at evening's end, I gave it to him. About a year later I heard from John Bailey that he'd had dozens of requests from other Irish musicians wanting him to build flat-back bouzoukis. This he did...and the rest, as they say...is history!"
Peter Abnett, an English luthier continues to build bouzoukis and other mandolin family instruments to this day. Luthiers Stefan Sobell and Joe Foley have also been major figures in the development of the instrument.
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