suka

Local name: suka
Classification: 3 Chordophones / 32 Composite chordophones / 321 Lutes / 321.3 Handle lutes / 321.32 Necked lutes / 321.322 Necked box lutes or necked guitars / 321.322-71 Necked box lutes or necked guitars sounded by bowing with a bow
Maker: Butryn Zbigniew
Date: 2004
Village / Town: Janów Lubelski
Region: Lubelskie Province
Country: Poland
Owner: The State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw
Inventory number: PME/8/KZ/1-2
Description: back plate, ribs, neck, pegbox and endpin carved from one piece; seven strings; underside pegs; flat fingerboard and tailpiece; one foot of the bridge longer, going through an opening in the top plate and resting on the back plate, functioning as a soundpost; top plate lightly convex; f-holes without crosswise cuts
Decoration: fingerboard embellished with a round, open-work rosette
Materials: wood, metal, leather
Performance practice: played in the vertical position (hung over the shoulder on a string or leaned on the knee); players applied side string shortening (the so-called fingernail technique); the suka is known thanks to an item from the Biłogoraj area shown at the First Polish Music Exhibition in Warsaw in 1888 (written account by Jan Karłowicz, sketch by Tadeusz Dowgird, 1888, watercolour painting by Wojciech Gerson, 1896); in the second half of the 19th c., and possibly at the beginning of the 20th c. it was used in the south of the Lublin region (the area of Biłgoraj), probably accompanied by a single-skin drum; now used by artists of the folk revival
Catalog card by: Zbigniew J. Przerembski


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