The Diatonic Cheng, Bukharian Hammered Dulcimer

[Pete Rushefsky <klezbanjo...>]

By the way there's a nice cut of a Bukharan Chang (recorded I believe in Israel 
in the 50's) on the following album:

EUCD1600 Music of the Oriental Jews from North Africa, Yemen & Bukhara.  
Authentic Field Recordings by Deben Bhattacharya.

Interestingly-- it's all in a major-type mode/maqam/dastgah so a tuning like 
the diatonic tuning Paul cites in his book may very well have been used by the 
player.

Paul, if I remember correctly from your book, the Chang came Westward into 
Central Asia from China.  Your theory was that English sailors had introduced 
the Chang there-- if so, is this the orgin for a diatonic tuning?  Or is it 
more a function of adaption to playing Eastern pentatonic melodies?  Obviously 
the diatonic Chang couldn't have been great for playing the maqam/dastgahs of 
Bukhara (except for a limited selection of them)

 

 

 

  "Gifford, Paul" <pgifford (at) umflint(dot)edu> wrote: 

From: r l reid [mailto:ro (at) panix(dot)com] wrote:

>Paul Gifford's extensive book "The Hammered Dulcimer" (Scarecrow
Press, 2001)
>makes scant mention of the "chang" of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan- I
beleive 
>that's the rough area Bukhara is found in. 

>Apparently there was a pre-Soviet version and a Soviet version.
Assuming
>you have the Soviet version, they were standardized into 4 sizes and
>"incorporated in 1938 into a state orchestra for playing Western
pieces".

>Tsimbls, cymbali, etc are notorious for thier lack of uniformity in
>design, construction, and tuning. Apparentl the chang is no
exception.
>Gifford quotes 4 different sources with 4 different setups, and none
of them
>have any indication of tuning.

Right---as I recall, the book by Tamara Vyzgo and A. Petrosyants,
_Uzbekskii
orkestr narodnykh instrumentov_ (Tashkent: Gosudarstvennoe
Izdatel'stvo 
Khudozhestvennoi Literatury UzSSR, 1962), pp. 30-31, gives the ranges
of the
four sizes, but not the specific tunings. Probably the instrument is
taught at
the conservatory in Tashkent, though who knows whether it is still
being
manufactured. I have a tuning for the older chang in the book, showing
that
it was basically "diatonic" (this is from Belaiev's 1933 book). Likely
the
post-1938 instruments had a chromatic tuning. Anybody experienced
with the
instrument could figure out a likely tuning, though, but you'd have to
find
someone familiar with string tensions. You've got a real rarity.

Paul Gifford

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