[8] No European musical instrument is so much appreciated by Orientals
as the bagpipe; it takes a long time to make the average Oriental
understand and admire the masterpieces of the great musicians of
the West played on any ordinary European instrument. But he takes
to the bagpipes on the first hearing, and it is seldom that he gets
tired of them. Of course there is much similarity both in the sound
and in the manner of playing between bagpipes and a certain popular
Oriental instrument which is played mostly by Turks, Arabs, Kurds,
and Armenians. Although the tone and the style of playing this
Oriental instrument resemble those of the bagpipes so much, there
is considerable difference in the form and make. The bag of this
instrument, which is called 'tooloom,' is made from a sheep's skin;
besides the small mouthpiece there is only one large reedpipe from
which the notes are obtained, and which thus replaces the chanter and
the three drones of its Highland counterpart. The player, placing the
blown-up sheepskin against his chest, and supporting it by the upper
part of his left arm, moves his fingers up and down over the holes in
the larger pipe. As a matter of fact, the sound of this instrument,
like much other Oriental music, appears to European listeners dull
and discordant, but it pleases the uncultivated taste of the ordinary
Orientals. At the popular fêtes it is a very common thing to see
many people, middle-aged as well as young, dancing together in a
circle, while pipe and drum fill the air with ceaseless clamour. It
is difficult to trace the original home of this instrument. It may be
conjectured that it was brought from the West by the persons who went
to the East with the Crusaders, or it may have been copied from them,
with certain modifications in form, by the Eastern peoples.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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