Baglama
Baglama. If a single instrument were to represent Turkish folk music it would have to be the baglama. There is no region, no village in Anatolia which is not familiar with this string instrument...
Baglama Making
Electric baglamas began to be made in the late 1960s to increase the sound volume and enable it to be used in rock music. Structurally similar to the original instrument, these have electroguitar pickups fitted into the body.
There are still no generally accepted standards for baglama making: which wood should be used for the body, how thick the sounding board should be, and how long the fingerboard. Yet gradually a standard baglama is emerging despite these debates. Instead of carving the body out of solid mulberry wood, which is difficult to obtain today, juniper wood is glued together in strips.
Spruce is used for the sounding board, and kelebek wood for the fingerboard. The size of the body and length of the fingerboard depends on the top note desired by the musician ordering the instrument.
