Exploring the Turkish Baglama & Some Music History

Описание: This video explores the baglama, or saz. This is an instrument from Turkey, and it can play microtones within the Turkish makam, or modes. I discovered this instrument while doing research on my new string trio, 'To the Walls of Troy'. You can listen here:    • To the Walls of Troy, by Rhett Clark.  

This trio is based on 'The Iliad', a story about the Trojan War in which Greeks invaded the city-state of Troy in Anatolia (modern Turkey). My research has led me to believe that microtones were used in the music of ancient Greece and Anatolia, so I have been exploring Eastern music and the instruments of these regions.

Long-necked lutes like this have been played in Anatolia and Mesopotamia for thousands of years. The modern baglama, or saz, is a type of long-necked lute called the tanbur. Tanburs have been played in Mesopotamia since the Akkadian Empire in the 3rd millennium BC. Archaeological evidence for tanburs in Anatolia dates back to 1500 BC, in the Hittite Empire. Instruments like these could have accompanied singers 5000 years ago or have been used in solo performance. Instruments very similar to the baglama could possibly have been played in Troy in the late Bronze Age - during the time of the Trojan War (thought by some scholars to have occurred between 1400-1200 BC).

As a guitarist, I’ve often been curious about the ancestry of the guitar. I’ve wondered how long people have told stories and written songs on necked instruments; I’ve wondered how long people have performed improv on such instruments to express themselves. It is thought that the guitar originated in Spain and is likely descended from the short-necked lutes of the Medieval era. The European lute comes from the oud of the Arabic world. Therefore, I thought the history of “guitar” went back to the Middle Ages, or perhaps late antiquity, and that the lyre predated the lute by 2000 years. Lyres are very old - the earliest lyres come from the ancient Sumerians city-state of UR, and date to around 2500 BC. Only recently, through my research for this string trio, have I learned that lutes (forerunner to the guitar) date back about as far as the lyre and other instruments. As a guitarist, it was very fascinating to learn that lutes date back to Sumeria – where people developed writing, brewing, storytelling, mathematics, and civilization itself.

I am a music education student, not a historian, so this video is not extremely thorough. I hope you’ll enjoy the video and the sound of this intriguing instrument, and I’m excited for you to hear 'To the Walls of Troy'.

I do not own copyright to any photo used in this video; all the photos are from the internet and are used here for educational purposes. Thanks to my friend David for letting me hear and play his baglama. The thumbnail for this video is not a baglama, but another type of tanbur described in the video.