All Topics  
Kobyz

 

 
   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link
 

 

Kobyz
 
 
  Topics Kobyz Topic Home

The Kobyz or kyl-kobyz is an ancient Kazakh
Kazakh

Kazakh may refer to:*Kazakhs, an ethnic group*Kazakh language*Kazakh cuisine*Kazakhstan*Culture of Kazakhstan*Qazakh Rayon, Azerbaijan*Qazax, Azerbaijan...
 string instrument
String instrument

A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones....
 (chordophone
Chordophone

A Chordophone is any musical instrument which makes sound by way of a vibrating string or strings stretched between two points. It is one of the four main divisions of instruments in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification....
) of the type known as a bowed lyre. It has two strings made of horsehair. The resonating cavity is usually covered with goat
Goat

The domestic goat is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the Bovidae family and is closely related to the sheep: both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae....
 leather.

Traditionally kobyzes were sacred instruments, owned by shamans and bakses (traditional spiritual medics). According to legends, the kobyz and its music could banish evil spirits, sicknesses and death.

In the 1930s, when the first folk instrument orchestras were established in the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, a new kind of kobyz came into existence.






Discussion
Ask a question about 'Kobyz'
Start a new discussion about 'Kobyz'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum



Encyclopedia


The Kobyz or kyl-kobyz is an ancient Kazakh
Kazakh

Kazakh may refer to:*Kazakhs, an ethnic group*Kazakh language*Kazakh cuisine*Kazakhstan*Culture of Kazakhstan*Qazakh Rayon, Azerbaijan*Qazax, Azerbaijan...
 string instrument
String instrument

A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones....
 (chordophone
Chordophone

A Chordophone is any musical instrument which makes sound by way of a vibrating string or strings stretched between two points. It is one of the four main divisions of instruments in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification....
) of the type known as a bowed lyre. It has two strings made of horsehair. The resonating cavity is usually covered with goat
Goat

The domestic goat is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the Bovidae family and is closely related to the sheep: both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae....
 leather.

Traditionally kobyzes were sacred instruments, owned by shamans and bakses (traditional spiritual medics). According to legends, the kobyz and its music could banish evil spirits, sicknesses and death.

In the 1930s, when the first folk instrument orchestras were established in the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, a new kind of kobyz came into existence. It now had four metallic strings and thus became closer to a violin
Violin

The violin is a Bow string instrument with four strings usually tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest and highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which also includes the viola and cello....
. Such a modernized kobyz can be used to play both Kazakh music and the most complicated works of violin literature. One of the few western musicians to use the kobyz is Trefor Goronwy
Trefor Goronwy

Trefor Goronwy is a vocalist, bass guitar, guitarist, and percussionist. He joined This Heat, for their final European tour in 1982, and continued to work with drummer Charles Hayward and soundman Stephen Rickard in the group Camberwell Now....
.

The kyl kyyak (Kyrgyz
Kyrgyz language

Kyrgyz or Kirghiz is a Turkic languages and, together with Russian language, an official language of Kyrgyzstan. It is most closely related to Altay language and more distantly so to Kazakh language....
: ??? ???? ) (sometimes spelt kyl kiak and sometimes without the 'kyl') is a stringed musical instrument used in Kyrgyz
Kyrgyz

The Kyrgyz are a Turkic peoples ethnic group found primarily in Kyrgyzstan....
 music. The instrument is carved from a single piece of wood (typically apricot
Apricot

The Apricot is a species of Prunus, classified with the plum in the subgenus Prunus. The native range is somewhat uncertain due to its extensive prehistoric cultivation, but most likely in northern and western China and Central Asia, possibly also Korea and Japan....
) and typically measures 60-70cm. It has 2 strings, one to provide melody and the other resonance. The kyl kyyak is played vertically with a bow
Bow (music)

In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones....
 and can be played on horse
Horse

The horse is a hoofed mammal, a subspecies of one of seven extant species of the family Equidae. The horse has evolution of the horse over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, odd-toed ungulate animal of today....
back. The strings and bow are normally made from horse hair and many instruments feature a carved horse's head. This all reflects the importance of the horse in Kyrgyz rural
Rural

Rural areas are large and isolated areas of a country, often with low populations. Today, 75 percent of the United States' inhabitants live in suburban and urban areas, but cities occupy only 2 percent of the country....
 culture.

See also


  • Music of Central Asia
    Music of Central Asia

    Central Asian music encompasses numerous different musical styles originating from a large number of Asian cultures. Central Asian music most often uses the pentatonic scale....
  • Baglama
    Baglama

    The baglama is a string instrument musical instrument shared by various cultures in the Eastern List of islands in the Mediterranean, Near East, and Central Asia....
  • Saz
    Saz

    Saz may refer to:* Baglama* The rap artist Sameh Zakout...
  • lute
    Lute

    Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....
  • Dutar
    Dutar

    The dutar is a traditional long-necked two-stringed lute found in Central Asia. Its name comes from the Persian language word for "two strings", dotar , although the Herati dutar of Afghanistan has 14 strings....
  • Dombra
    Dombra

    The dombura are long-necked lutes popular in the Central Asian nations. The name arises from the originally Persian tanbur and the instrument shares some of its characteristics, varying from region to region, with the Turkic komuz....
  • Komuz
    Komuz

    The komuz or qomuz , Azerbaijan Gopuz, is an ancient fretless string instrument used in Central Asian music, related to certain other Turkic string instruments and the lute....
  • Byzantine Lyra
    Byzantine lyra

    The Byzantine lyra , or Byzantine lira, or lyra, or lira was a Medieval music Bow string musical instrument in the Byzantine Empire and is considered as the ancestor of most European bowed instruments....
    , the bowed lyre of the Byzantine Empire
    Byzantine Empire

    Byzantine Empire and Eastern Roman Empire are conventional names used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople....
  • Gadulka
    Gadulka

    The Gadulka is a traditional Bulgaria bowed string instrument. Alternate spellings are "gudulka" and "g'dulka". It is a descendant of the Hudok or Gudok....
  • Gusle
    Gusle

    The gusle or gusla is a single-string instrument used in the Balkans and in the Dinaric Alps region.The term gusle/gusli/husli/husla is common to all Slavic people and generally denotes a musical instrument with strings....
  • Rebab
    Rebab

    The rebab , also rebap, rabab, rebeb, rababah, or al-rababa) is a type of string instrument so named no later than the 8th century and spread via Islamic trading routes over much of North Africa, the Middle East, parts of Europe, and the Far East....
  • Kamancheh
    Kamancheh

    The kamancheh, kamencheh, kamanche, kamancha or qyamancha is a Iran bowed string instrument related to the bowed rebab, the historical ancestor of the kamancheh and also to the bowed Byzantine lyra of the Byzantine Empire, ancestor of the European violin family....
  • Kemenche
    Kemenche

    A kemenche is a bottle-shaped, 3-string bowed lute that resembles the Byzantine lyra and the Persian Kamanche. Found in the Black Sea region of Asia Minor, it is also known as the "kementche of Laz people"....
  • The lyra of Crete
  • Gudok