Cümbüş

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Mandolin cümbüş with frets

Cümbüş is a Turkish lute with a short or long neck without frets or with frets. Its circular sound box made of metal, similar to a banjo, has a skin cover that is tightened with screws. The cümbüş has six double strings, which are usually tuned like an oud and plucked with a pick or a quill.

origin

The Egyptian musician Mohammed Abdel Wahab with a mandolin cümbüş

The instrument was invented around 1930 by Zeynel Abidin (1881–1947), who later took the family name Cümbüş . Forerunners from the lute family saz , developed by him, show not only a relationship to the banjo but also a possible origin from the Central Asian lutes komuz and rubab . In the story as told by his descendants, as a war veteran of the First World War in 1930 he was invited to a dinner at which the President of the still young Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal Pascha was also present. When Mustafa Kemal talked about the modernization of Turkey and the cultural revolution in Turkish music, Zeynel Abidin talked about his newly developed instrument, which in just a few simple steps could play both classical music in the Turkish style ( alla turca ) and Western music ( alla franga ) could play. Ataturk, who himself valued classical Turkish music and at the same time politically prepared the introduction of the western musical style, found great interest in the lute. He invited Abidin to a demonstration of the as yet unnamed instrument. On January 24th, Abidin auditioned in the presence of Ataturk. Since Ataturk liked it very much and associated the sound with cümbüş , which is the Turkish term for “exuberant celebration” ( Remmidemmi ), Abidin asked if he could call it that from now on. Three days later, Osman Zeki Üngör was accepted into the state-sponsored orchestras.

The instrument embodied the Kemalist ideal. It could be used for both Turkish and Western music, which went well with the Turkish republic's cultural orientation towards the West. The cümbüş was inexpensive to manufacture and thus an instrument of the people who, according to Ataturk, should deal with the fine arts. Small modifications of the design (shortened neck) should also enable women to play the instrument, which took into account the new position of women in the ideal of equal citizenship. In fact, during the Kemalist one-party rule, Muslim women played in professional orchestras for the first time - preferably with the cümbüş .

In the course of time, the cultural position of the cümbüş changed from a cultural revolutionary instrument to an instrument that was played by the common people, especially the Roma, at weddings. Today it can be found in Turkish as well as in foreign folk - but it has largely disappeared from the limelight.

Design

Like the banjo, the skin made of animal skin has been replaced by a plastic skin that is tightened by a metal ring. The resonance body is made of light aluminum, which is perforated on the side under the tension ring. Due to the harsh conditions in rural Anatolia, it was designed to be very stable.

At the transition from the sound box to the neck there is a screw cap that can be used to change the angle of the neck and thus optimize the string position and playing position. The screw also allows you to mount a different neck to modify the pitch (basic tuning) and the sound. With the neck unscrewed, the cümbüş can be transported more comfortably.

  • Standard cümbüş , like an oud without frets
  • Guitar cümbüş , like a guitar with frets
  • Mandolin cümbüş , a type of mandolin banjo with a shortened neck and frets
  • Saz cümbüş , with a long neck like a saz
  • Tambur cümbüş or tanbur cümbüş , with a very long neck like a tambour
  • Cümbüş with an electric pickup
  • Yaylı tambur or yaylı tanbur , a long-necked lute as the tambur , but with a bow deleted

With the banjo, only some parts of the body are made of metal. The metal body of the cümbüş is extremely unusual for a lute instrument, generally for a stringed instrument, but not without a forerunner in history. For example, a lute instrument with a copper body was found in a grave from the time of the Chinese Empress Wu Zetian (r. 690–705). Furthermore, in the anecdotal collection Shan-kü sin-hua , written by the Chinese author Yang Yü between 1357 and 1360 , a hu-pu-szū ( qūbūz , Turkish kopuz ) made of Damascus steel is the most popular musical instrument among Muslims.

Style of play

The sound of a yaylı tambour played with a bow

The cümbüş sounds very loud. That is why musicians like to integrate them into their wedding chapels, as the clarinets and bell drums ( darbuka ) could not drown them out.

Web links

Commons : Cümbüş  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Laurence Picken : Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey . Oxford University Press, London 1975, p. 3295