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Polyphony in Touloum Playing by the Pontic Greeks
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 February 2019
Extract
The Pontic Greeks, refugees from their traditional homelands that today lie within the borders of Turkey and the USSR respectively, brought with them two folk music instruments, aside from other widely diffused instruments that are almost unknown in present-day Greece: the lira (‘a three-stringed, bowed lute’) and the touloum (‘bagpipe’). While the Greeks clearly distinguish the lira from the remaining Greek instruments by calling it the ‘Pontic Lira,’ the Greeks from Pontus simply call it lira. On occasion, mainly in song texts, one discovers the Turkish designation kementze (kemençe). The name touloum (Turkish tulum) originally meant “… a tube or sack made of sheep or goat skin which serves as a vessel for oil, cheese and the like.” Curiously, in western Macedonia the ancient Greek word angion (‘vessel’) is often used in place of touloum, which, on the other hand, is totally unknown in eastern Macedonia. The reason for this difference in terminology cannot be clarified.
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- Copyright © 1974 By the International Folk Music Council
References
Footnotes
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