Jadagan

The jadagan (çatkhan, or Siberian harp) is a wooden board zither of the Khakass Turkic people of Russian Siberia, usually with 6 or 7 strings stretched across movable bridges and tuned a fourth or fifth apart. The body is hollowed out from underneath like an upturned trough. It has a convex surface and an end bent towards the ground. The strings are plucked and the sound is very smooth. The instrument was considered to be sacrosanct and playing it was a rite bound to taboos. The instrument was mainly used at court and in monasteries, since strings symbolised the twelve levels of the palace hierarchy.

Jadagan
String instrument
Classification
DevelopedAntiquity
Related instruments

In the West

Folklorist Nancy Thym-Hochrein has researched the instrument,[1] and musician Raphael De Cock is a contemporary player.

Notes

  1. International Council for Traditional Music; Columbia University. Dept. of Music (1999). Directory of traditional music. International Council for Traditional Music. p. 31. Retrieved 22 April 2012.


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