Fujara

Here's an interesting microtonal folk instrument. From the
mountains of Eastern Europe, the fujara (pronounced fu-yah'-rah, I
assume), seems to be a type of overtone flute about six feet long,
with three tone holes. See and hear:

http://bluyovo.misto.cz/_MAIL_/

Be patient, the server is slow.

The traditional style, judging by the seven Real Audio examples on
this page, is for the player/singer to alternate solo flute and
vocal. Since the flute is overblown to several harmonics, its
intonation is clearly microtonal. But the vocals don't sound like
they're in the same tuning. They sound simply diatonic. This is
especially remarkable considering that the musician sings the same
melody he just played on the flute.

In the sixth example, "Hej cie ze to ovce," the vocal tunings are
all over the place. But I would chalk that up to vocal inaccuracy,
as it doesn't seem to replicate the flute's tuning, or any
particular tuning for that matter. So I'd still call it simply
diatonic singing. In the last one, the singing is a highly
inflected sort of talk-singing chant, not unlike some Native
American chant! This is the only one of these examples in which the
singing strikes me as microtonal. Even there, the underlying scale
is clearly diatonic.

--
David J. Finnamore
Nashville, TN, USA
http://personal.bna.bellsouth.net/bna/d/f/dfin/index.html
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