I’ve been telling people lately about a new instrument I’ve fallen in love with: the baglamas (Gr. μπαγλαμάς). It’s a tiny version of a bouzouki1, intended to complement my mandola Marama2. A baglamas is tiny, certainly small enough to take travelling — Marama, on the other hand, has a sturdy wooden travel box weighing in at 16 kilograms, which is less practical.

Noodling about online today3 I stumbled on a couple of video clips that pretty much sum up why the baglamas is so cool. This dude had open heart surgery, and here he is in hospital, in his hospital gown, doped up on percocet, playing his baglamas.

The second one ends with a wee bit of rebetika that I recognise (wonder of wonders) — it jumped out at me because the scale uses both the minor and the major third (running both upwards and downwards). Very weird to my classical ears, but rather lovely.

Update

Rebetiko.org has a film extract showing the style of baglamas I’d like to own. Also a dadaist manifesto denouncing the tetrachordo bouzouki (with four, instead of three, pairs of strings).

Notes:

  1. Not the same as a Turkish baglama, which is roughly the same size as the bouzouki although I’ve no idea how it’s tuned. [↪]
  2. Marama will get her own page here as soon as I take some photographs. [↪]
  3. Actually I was trying to find out the tuning for a kemane, although that’s neither here nor there. [↪]