Whatdoesitmean. Com

The Representative from California has the floor

pulled this out of the used CD bin at the record store last week and bought it for $1 to see what it was. maybe my favorite band discovery of the whole year

!germs

so the cumbus (pronounced like jumbuse) is a Turkish instrument, made by some dude in Istanbul in the early 1900s. He saw how bands were using banjos because they project a lot of noise, but he wanted to make an instrument that was both loud for an audience and could play middle eastern music. Now that baglama cumbus is not the only type, of course, they have the cumbuses for the other lengths of saz, oud cumbuses, tambur I believe, and mandolin, very interesting instruments, all still made by the same company.

This particular one is a cumbus saz, specifically a baglama saz (there are other sizes such as a cura saz). The saz comes from somewhere in the middle east or central asia, it is mostly associated with Turks but loads of Balkan and Arab cultures have played them (even Armenians). The saz is a very interesting instrument, usually has no holes on the top, has a bridge sorta like a banjo, but most of the time has doubled strings. The cumbus saz keeps the same neck about with the Turkish scale and string frets but has that nice banjoish head.