Instruments Join Music Collection

Five rare musical instruments have been acquired by UCSB's internationally known Eichheim Collection of Musical Instruments, reported Dolores M. Hsu, collection director and professor of music. The instruments included the kora from West Africa, the baglama from Turkey, and several Japanese instruments.

"I have long wanted to acquire a kora for our collection," said Hsu of the large 21-string harp-lute, "but to find one of this quality was beyond my expectation."

The kora, indigenous to the Mandinka people of the Gambia, was made by the illustrious griot (singer of narrative songs) Alhadji Papa Susso about 80 years ago. It was through his son, Papa Susso, that Hsu acquired the instrument.

"Ramazan Gungor is one of the most renowned performers of the baglama, a three-string, long-necked lute which is the quintessential instrument of Turkish folk music," said Hsu. Now an elderly man, Gungor lives in Fehtiye, a town in southern Anatolia, where he made the donated instrument in 1980.

"His instruments are few in number, made of the finest wood, and particularly cherished at a time when most such instruments are manufactured," Hsu added.

Sherwin Carlquist, who spent time in Japan in the early 1960s, donated three Japanese instruments to the collection. "Fine old Japanese instruments are exceedingly difficult to find; very few of them are available, and they are prohibitively expensive," explained Hsu about the gifts from Carlquist, a Claremont biology professor emeritus.

They included a sho, a mouth organ with 17 bamboo pipes fitted into a lacquered sound box with a silver ring and mouthpiece, and a double-reed, oboe-like instrument known as a hichiriki. In addition, they included a kotsuzumi, an antique hourglass drum with an ornately lacquered body and drum heads intricately laced to the body with silk cord.

Now numbering more than 900 instruments, the acquisitions represent "a significant step forward in the East Asian area" of the Eichheim Collection, said Hsu.