Patrick Comerford
It is now over 30 years since the Swedish Institute and the the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs invited me to take part in the ‘Euro-Islam’ Conference on 15-17 June 1995 in Stockholm and on Lidingö, an island in the Stockholm Archipelago, north-east of Stockholm, once the home of the diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.
The participants included Muhammad Larijani, then a senior Iranian politician and theologian and once a top adviser on foreign affairs to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The conference was groundbreaking and became a critical precursor to the launch of the European Union’s wider Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (the Barcelona Process) later that year.
One evening that June as participants we were taken on a cruise on the Stockholm Archipelago, with 24,000 to 30,000 islands and islets 80 km east from Stockholm into the Baltic Sea. The on-board entertainment including a mixed-band that included a Syrian musician playing the bouzouki.
In conversation, I asked him where in Greece he had learned to play the bouzouki. I was surprised to hear that, in fact, he had learned bouzouki under the tutelage of the Irish musician Donal Lunny. I had almost forgotten about this incident for more than 30 years until the news some days ago of the death of Donal Lunny (23 October 2026).
The bouzouki (μπουζούκι, plural μπουζούκια, bouzoukia) is a popular instrument in Greece. It is part of the long-necked lute family and from the family as the mandolin and the lute. It has a round body and a long neck with a fretted fingerboard, and steel strings and it is played with a plectrum, producing a sharp metallic sound, similar to that of a mandolin but pitched lower.
The Irish bouzouki is derived from the Greek bouzouki and other instruments similar to the bouzouki, including the buzuq and the Balkan tambura, are found in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Cyprus, Balkans and Turkey.
The Greek bouzouki is a plucked musical instrument of the lute family, called the thabouras or tambouras family. The tambouras were found in ancient Greece as the pandura, and were in different sizes, shapes, depths of body, lengths of neck and number of strings. The bouzouki and the baglamas are direct descendants.
The Mantineia Base, a Greek marble relief now in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, dates from 330 to 320 BCE, shows a muse playing a variant of the pandoura. From Byzantine times it was known first as pandoura and then as tambouras.
The name μπουζούκι (bouzouki) is not originally Greek but comes from a Turkish word bozuk, meaning ‘broken’ or ‘modified’. The bouzouki was brought to Greece in the early 1900s by Greek refugees from Anatolia, and quickly became the central instrument to rebetiko and similar music, so that it is now an important element of modern Laïko pop Greek music.
Originally the body was carved from a solid block of wood, similar to the saz, but when the instrument arrived in Greece in the early 1910s it was modified with the addition of a staved back borrowed from the Neapolitan mandola, and the top angled in the manner of a Neapolitan mandolin in order as to increase the strength of the body so it could withstand thicker steel strings. The type of the instrument used in rebetiko music was a three-course instrument with three pairs of strings, but in the 1950s a four-course variety was developed and was made popular by Manolis Chiotis.
A bouzouki can be made with many differences not only in the number of strings but also in other features, such as the neck length, width or height, the depth of the bowl or main body, or the width of the staves. The quality of the wood used in making a bouzouki is of great importance for the sound. Mulberry, apricot, cherry, acacia and elm are said to be the best woods for making the bowl, with walnut, plane, and chestnut seen as slightly inferior. The wood must be solid and sourced from slow-growth trees.
The top or soundboard should be cedar or spruce, cut in one piece. The best varnish is a natural one made of shellac, applied by hand in many layers in a traditional way, for both acoustic and visual effects. The neck must be of very dry hardwood so it does not warp.
The Greek trichordo bouzouki, the classic style of bouzouki, was introduced around 1900 and was the mainstay of most rebetiko music. The bouzouki became more popular in Greece after the 1919-1922 war in Asia Minor and the forced ‘population exchange’ between Greece and Turkey.
The early bouzoukia mostly had three courses (six strings in three pairs, known as trichordo) and were tuned in different ways.
At the end of the 1950s, four-course (tetrachordo) bouzoukia started to gain popularity in Greece. The four-course bouzouki was made popular by the Greek composer, singer and bouzouki virtuoso Manolis Chiotis (Μανώλης Χιώτης, 1921-1970) who also used a tuning akin to standard guitar tuning and he helped make the bouzouki a truly popular instrument capable of a wide range of musical expression.
As well as developing the modern tetrachordo bouzouki, Manolis Chiotis was a pioneer of the use of amplification for the instrument, which he may have been using as early as 1945. However, the earliest documented use of amplification for the bouzouki comes from a 1952 photograph, showing Vasilis Tsitsanis and Yiannis Papaioannou playing bouzoukis, each with an electric guitar-style pick-up attached in the soundhole.
Chiotis collaborated closely with Mikis Theodorakis in the early1960s, and his bouzouki playing was central to the 1960 recording of Theodorakis’s Epitaphios with Grigoris Bithikotsis, a recording widely regarded as a landmark in modern Greek music.
Today, the tetrachordo is the most common bouzouki used in Greek music, though a few traditionalists still prefer the trichordo, particularly for the older rebetiko style of playing.
The five-course bouzouki (pentachordo) has 10 strings arranged in five pairs, which allows for extended chords and versatility. It was popularised by Antonopoulos Giorgos.
The Greek baglamas (μπαγλαμάς) or baglamadaki (μπαγλαμαδάκι) is very different from the Turkish bağlama. It is tuned the same as the trichordo bouzouki but pitched an octave higher, with unison pairs on the four highest strings and an octave pair on the lower D. Musically, the baglamas is most often found supporting the bouzouki in the Piraeus style of rebetiko.
The Irish bouzouki, with four courses, a flatter back, and differently tuned from the Greek bouzouki, is a more recent development, stemming from the introduction of the Greek instrument into Irish music by Johnny Moynihan around 1965. It was later adopted by Andy Irvine, Dónal Lunny, and many others, although some Irish musicians, including Alec Finn, continued to use the Greek-style instruments.
A minute of bouzouki and guitar music in a taverna in the Plaka in Athens (Patrick Comerford)
Words in this series:
1, Neologism, Νεολογισμός.
2, Welcoming the stranger, Φιλοξενία.
3, Bread, Ψωμί.
4, Wine, Οίνος and Κρασί.
5, Yogurt, Γιαούρτι.
6, Orthodoxy, Ορθοδοξία.
7, Sea, Θᾰ́λᾰσσᾰ.
8,Theology, Θεολογία.
9, Icon, Εἰκών.
10, Philosophy, Φιλοσοφία.
11, Chaos, Χάος.
12, Liturgy, Λειτουργία.
13, Greeks, Ἕλληνες or Ρωμαίοι.
14, Mañana, Αύριο.
15, Europe, Εὐρώπη.
16, Architecture, Αρχιτεκτονική.
17, The missing words.
18, Theatre, θέατρον, and Drama, Δρᾶμα.
19, Pharmacy, Φᾰρμᾰκείᾱ.
20, Rhapsody, Ραψῳδός.
21, Holocaust, Ολοκαύτωμα.
22, Hygiene, Υγιεινή.
23, Laconic, Λακωνικός.
24, Telephone, Τηλέφωνο.
25, Asthma, Ασθμα.
26, Synagogue, Συναγωγή.
27, Diaspora, Διασπορά.
28, School, Σχολείο.
29, Muse, Μούσα.
30, Monastery, Μοναστήρι.
31, Olympian, Ολύμπιος.
32, Hypocrite, Υποκριτής.
33, Genocide, Γενοκτονία.
34, Cinema, Κινημα.
35, autopsy and biopsy
36, Exodus, ἔξοδος
37, Bishop, ἐπίσκοπος
38, Socratic, Σωκρατικὸς
39, Odyssey, Ὀδύσσεια
40, Practice, πρᾶξις
41, Idiotic, Ιδιωτικός
42, Pentecost, Πεντηκοστή
43, Apostrophe, ἀποστροφή
44, catastrophe, καταστροφή
45, democracy, δημοκρατία
46, ‘Αρχή, beginning, Τέλος, end
47, ‘Αποκάλυψις, Apocalypse
48, ‘Απόκρυφα, Apocrypha
49, Ἠλεκτρον (Elektron), electric
50, Metamorphosis, Μεταμόρφωσις
51, Bimah, βῆμα
52, ἰχθύς (ichthýs) and ψάρι (psari), fish.
53, Τὰ Βιβλία (Ta Biblia), The Bible
54, Φῐλοξενῐ́ᾱ (Philoxenia), true hospitality
55, εκκλησία (ekklesia), the Church
56, ναός (naos) and ἱερός (ieros), a church
57, Χριστούγεννα (Christougenna), Christmas
58, ἐπιφάνεια (epipháneia), θεοφάνεια, (theopháneia), Epiphany and Theophany
59, Ζέφυρος (Zéphuros), the West Wind
60, Αύριο (Avrio), Tomorrow
61, καλημέρα (κaliméra), ‘Good Morning’, and καλαμάρι, κalamári, ‘squid’
62, Ελευθερία ή θάνατος, ‘Freedom or Death’
63, Ποδόσφαιρο, ‘Football’
64, καφές (coffee), Φραπές (frappé)
65, Odyssey (η Οδύσσεια) and Odysseus (Ὀδυσσεύς)
66, Cosmopolitan, Κοσμοπολίτης
67, Εἰρήνη (Eirene), Peace
68, Ρωμιοσύνη (Romiosini)
69, Μπουζούκι (bouzouki)
70, Παϊδάκια (‘spare ribs’) and Παιδάκια (‘little children’)
Series to be continued
Manolis Chiotis helped make the bouzouki a truly popular instrument capable of a wide range of musical expression
