The Viola d'Amore: An Instrument Between Worlds

PART six

The Gadulka

The gadulka continues to ply its trade in the musical trenches of the Balkans where it's been stationed since time immemorial, or at least since someone thought to write it down.

The etymology? Brace yourselves: it comes from the old Bulgarian verb gaditi, meaning 'to sound.' That's it. It sounds, therefore gadulka.

The Pear-Shaped
Problem Persists

Pear-shaped charm and cherry (or pear) wood sheen, the gadulka does its thing principally in western Bulgaria, lending heroic background music to epic songs about the national struggle for freedom.

Its strings are stopped laterally (you prod them from the side with your fingernails instead of squashing them like a violinist). And to keep things interesting, some versions come festooned with three to ten sympathetic strings. (Martínez, 2002).

The Balkan & Anatolian
Family Reunion

Across Anatolia and the Balkans, you've got this whole sprawl of instruments running the same game: pear-shaped silhouette and that slick nail-on-strings move. The gadulka, in all its same pear-shaped, nail-prodded glory, shares its bloodline with instruments like the lyra (that troublemaking recidivist we encountered earlier) which has been causing nomenclatural chaos for donkey's years.

The evolution of these pear-shaped beasts mirrors centuries of tangled cultural exchange-vibes in the region. Notable figures include Greek-born kemenche master Vasilâki (1845-1907) and renowned tanbûr player Tanbûri Cemil Bey (1871-1916), who introduced these instruments into classical ensembles known as fine saz music. (Rice, 2004).

Tunings & etc

Our fingernail-friendly companion typically has three strings, though some versions roll with more, and hte unique feature, particularly in regions such as Thrace and the Balkan mountains, is the sympathetic strings. These models often get dubbed lingurski or 'gypsy' gadulkas, nodding to Romani communities.

Tunings vary by region, the usual suspects are A–E–A, A–A–E, and A–E–D.
Sympathetic strings are tuned to chromatic notes, though not always in alignment with the main strings.

Weddings to Nightclubs

The gadulka has long been trundled out for the nation's officially meaningful moments: folk dances, New Year rites, weddings, festivals, and any other gathering requiring a reverent scrape in the direction of heritage. Then communism kicked down the door, clapped its meaty hands together, and announced, 'Yo, comrades! Consider it nationalised.'

It was rewarded for its loyalty by being absorbed into state-approved folk orchestras, as Rice (2004) documents, the modern gadulka is itself a product of twentieth-century cultural engineering: during the Communist era, 'state-sponsored folk orchestras aiming to represent Bulgarian cultural performance' arranged gadulkas 'from soprano to double bass, as in the violin family.'

Come the 1980s, the instrument was released from its institutional duties and dispatched into nightclubs, and by 1989 it had been enthusiastically repackaged for the burgeoning 'world music' market. Meanwhile, away from ministries, festivals, and cultural export strategies, the gadulka carried on regardless: played by buskers, fiddled by locals, and generally kept alive on street corners and pavements. Thus it continues, threading its way through Bulgaria's sonic bloodstream.

Regional Variations

The gadulka belongs to a wider family of instruments spread across Eastern Europe and the Balkans, sharing kinship with similar bowed instruments like the gudok/hudok of Russia and Ukraine. These variants, with their pear-shaped bodies have largely slipped into obscurity while the gadulka has endured. 

The gadulka also answers to a whole string of regional aliases. Kemene, kemenche, tsigulka, g’ola, and various other locally cherished labels refer to instruments that are, functionally and acoustically, much the same thing. The differences lie largely in geography and pronunciation rather than in construction or technique.

Additionally, a type of rebec is depicted in the monastery of Kalenić, Kosovo, dating from the ass-end of the first decade to the second decade of the fifteenth century. The instrument is shown being held on the shoulder, further reflecting the evolution of stringed instruments during this period and demonstrating that even in fifteenth-century monasteries, people were painting fiddles (see A Historical Survey of Musical Instruments as Portrayed in Mediaeval Art in Serbia and Macedonia, Roksanda Pejović. Dec., 1982).

The Byzantine lyra depicted at Dečani bears a resemblance to the lirica and the Macedonian gadulka. Even the gusle, a traditional Serbian instrument used for accompanying epic singing, makes regular cameo appearances in icons.

Modern Revival

Modern performers have ensured that the gadulka, having survived peasants, planners, and nightclubs, now enjoys a healthy international afterlife. Mira Kolarova showcases its traditional role in her album The Gadulka: Music of Bulgaria, while the Bulgarka Women's Ensemble, who achieved international fame in the 1980s and 90s, feature it alongside complex vocal harmonies in Bulgarian Folk Songs and Gadulka. Vassil Goranov demonstrates various regional playing styles across his folk music collections, and Goran Bregović (a Bosnian musician who has made a career of bringing Balkan music to international audiences) weaves the gadulka into contemporary contexts like his Underground soundtrack, revealing the instrument's versatility in film and popular music.