BOUZOUKI

 The Greek bouzouki is a long-necked fretted musical instrument from the pandoura/pandouris family, dating back to ancient Greece. Also called trichord/trichordo because it had 3 strings, is the first fretted instrument known. A source of our knowledge about this instrument is the Mantineia marble (4th Century BC) depicting the mythical contest between Apollo and Marsyas, where a muse is playing a pandouris seated on a rock. From Byzantine times it was called tamboura, and can be seen in wall paintings and sculptures.
This instrument was reintroduced and brought to Greece by immigrants from Asia Minor, following the 1919–1922 war in Asia Minor and the subsequent exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey, ethnic Greeks fled to Greece. The name bouzouki comes from the Arabic word bozuk, meaning ‘broken’ or ‘modified’. Stable metal frets were added, replacing the mobile (animal gut) frets. Mechanical keys were also added, instead of the wooden tuning pegs. These early bouzoukis were still mostly three-string (three courses in pairs) and were tuned in different ways, as to the scale one wanted to play. The low string was used mainly as a drone string. In the 1950s, a fourth set of strings was added, and the four-course (tetrachordo) bouzouki started to gain popularity.