To bind, to tie, to knot, to connect (Μπαγλαμας)

There is a narrow house sandwiched between other narrow houses sitting on a hill on the north side of town. After climbing the breath stealing hill to reach this little house, one opens the door and faced with a flight of stairs, continues upward. At the top of the stairs, there is a tiny unfinished bedroom to the left and a minuscule kitchen to the right, complete with a floor painted colorfully by a child’s hand and meticulously lacquered over by a loving father. 

Directly in front of the stairs, a door opens to reveal a room in seeming disarray. Wood fragments sit tilted against each other. Drills, saws, clamps and pliers decorate counter tops and walls, and instruments in varying states of brokenness lay waiting for a restoration of their beauty. A man moves through this room, his thick dark hair colored by traces of sawdust, and his hands, with capable dirt under the nails, touch briefly on each piece of wood as though touching a living being. He steps forward, lifting his arms to open optimistic blue shutters and reveals the sea below, bathing the room in afternoon light. The incense of heated wood perfumes the air and dust holds court.  

This man and another talk quietly, their voices echoing on the periphery of my consciousness as I study the fascinating room around me. The buzzing of the conversation behind me shifts to prices and timetables and I jump in impulsively, my fingertips coated in dust from tracing the exotic shape of an instrument I couldn’t name “Yes,” I say without hesitation, “Can you make one for me?” 

There is great irony to the names of the instruments distinct to Rebetiko, the names being derived from their Turkish origins. Bouzouki (μπουζούκι) comes from the Turkish word bozuk meaning “broken.” While this meaning could be figuratively applied to the state of many bouzouki players, the concept of being broken actually applies to the shifted tuning of the instrument itself. The Bouzouki is a fretted stringed instrument in the family of the lute and a descendent of the Turkish Saz. While the Saz was fretted, the frets were spaced microtonally to account for the non-western intervals of the Turkish scales. The frets of the Bouzouki, however, are tempered spacing to whole and half steps and the tuning of the strings are D, A, D. 

Baglamas (Μπαγλαμας) comes from the Turkish word bağlamak, meaning “to bind, to tie, to knot, to connect.” A Baglamas is the smaller counterpart to the Bouzouki, tuned the same yet an octave higher, comparable in size to a soprano ukulele and a Portuguese cavaquinho. As Greek politics shifted, and Rebetiko became a persecuted art form, the petite frame of the Baglamas allowed it to be slipped unseen into a sleeve or coat pocket.  Due to the higher register and the bright timbre, the notes of the Baglamas carry over the full sound of a Rebetiko group. 

There is a responsibility to having and instrument created for you. There is a respect that one must have for the maker beyond simple compensation. There must be an acknowledgement of the work done and love offered. There must be an understanding of the instrument itself, a familiarity of the smell of the wood, the smoothness of the texture and a comfort with the weight. I am soon to be bound to a baglamas, an instrument I have never attempted to play. My fingers will find the shapes for the first time on the neck of an instrument that will be measured and crafted specifically to the contours of my hands. My baglamas will carry the humidity of the sea absorbed in the wood and my fingers will learn to play Rebetiko, a music so full of passion and love, that I find myself needing to re-examine my own definitions.   

Someone recently told me that one cannot ask for Love, it must simply be given. I disagree. Perhaps it is my musician’s heart that rebels against this explanation, but to me Love is not a gift. It is a process, an action, a verb. It is in the clumsy years long journey of learning the scales, in the bending and sanding of wood, in the building of a house, brick by brick, in the combing of a child’s hair, in the touch of a hand with callouses forged by pain. Love is not an exclusion of all other paths but rather the following of one path as it veers and curves, changing horizons and notes with every verse. Love is loud as she shouts demands and she is quietly vulnerable through the soft hours of the night. She causes fear, gives power and takes responsibility. She does not follow rules or have a need to be conventional. Love bleeds into the broken notes of the bouzouki, sighs through the words of the rebetes, and ties herself to the strings of the baglamas. Love is what drives us to make music, to write and to create art.  Love builds instruments.

*****

We left the little workshop on the hill, closing the door on the cool shadows of the interior and stepping into the intense afternoon sun. My friend looked at me and then looked away, shaking his head. “Jen,” he commented drolly, “This is Greece. You could have asked for a better price.” 

Well, shit.