Romanian NON-Panflutes?

[Lancelot]

I saw a few photos on deviantArt.com today of a single-tube flute/whistle of some kind, with at least three tone holes near the bottom of the tube, but I could see no windway. The one photo that showed it being played is here> http://nicubunu.deviantart.com/art/Shep ... 5389&qo=51

Do any of the experts here know something about these instruments?
I searched the web for a little while but found nothing so far about anything except panflutes and Zamfir despite trying to filter that out of the search.

Thanks for any info you might have.

Lance

[Mr.Gumby]

See here, around 3.50

Also search for Nikola Parov, he plays that sort of thing (and many more besides)

[dunnp]

I bought some great whistles in the folk music shop in Budapest a good few years ago. They were from all over Serbia, Romania, and Hungary. The small serbian one pitched around E was the sweestest sounding whistle I've ever owned but I crushed it. It was made from a soft wood but sounded great if you soaked it a bit first. I use the salvaged fipple on a generation f body. The fipple on this one was on the front. All the others I bought that day had the fipple in the back.

If I'm not mistaken MTguru ended up with a carved plumwood g whistle I'd sent to Mr. Eskin to thank him for helping me with a good flute trade. It was also nice.

If I ever get back to that shop I will stock up again esecially on the Serbian E whistles which I think came in under a fiver. maybe the best whistle I ever owned and was crushed when I crushed it.

Take Care, Patrick

[I.D.10-t]

Can't tell from the photo, is it similar to the Fluier?

[JackCampin]

Your link is so slow to load I gave up and looked at Google's thumbnail.

It appears to be almost the same as whistles I have from the Csango Hungarian minority in Moldavia, except the brass ends on your picture are bigger. Six-hole whistle with the windway on the back, conical bore. The favourite pitch among the Csango is A, but the one in the picture looks too small. In Hungarian it's "Moldvai furulya". Look up YouTubes of Andras Hodorog playing it.

[JackCampin]

(About an hour on, that link still hasn't loaded far enough for me to see the bottom half of the whistle).

Here's an old Hungarian man playing a bigger version of the same thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff0e1RfICwk

A smaller whistle, around G I think:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7eL87GQ_CM

Hodorog on A whistle accompanied by the koboz, in a Csango dance tune which I think is of Bulgarian origin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYP7R5tyu7o

[hans]

Ahh, thanks for the links!

Here is a video about wooden whistles and how they are made, can't understand a word, but there is plenty to see (and listen to) and good close ups, the workshop of maker Bán György, what an amazing man!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM7YwoCSv_U&NR=1

and a link to his web site:
http://www.tanchaz.hu/fafuvos.htm

[JackCampin]

György Bán is a really nice bloke as well as a terrific instrument maker. I have a few of his instruments and use them a lot.

[JackCampin]

Another video showing the Csango Hungarian technique on these things. The instrument in the video is a design from much further west - that kind of decoration is popular around Cluj. I have one of those too (in B flat) - it isn't as good as the Moldavian ones I have (in A by Andras Hodorog and sharp of B flat by the folks at the now-defunct gardon.hu).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_uUUEO7CCQ

The song is very popular in the area ("Érik, érik a cseresnye").

I've been posting about the music of the Hungarian minorities because that's what I have experience of. The Romanians play music which isn't always all that different, on instruments which are often identical. Which group originated a particular musical idea is less often definitely knowable than either likes to think. Both groups get rather insanely possessive about their culture at times and YouTube comments bring out cultural nationalism at its worst.

[mutepointe]

They're all just jealous as all get out of the Slovak people. (Those ethinic identities still exist in and around my hometown near Pittsbugh, Pennsylvania but the intermarrying is finally lessening the tensions. I married an Irish girl.) I can only imagine what those ethnic identities and tensions are like in the Old Country.

[MichaelLoos]

The OP's photo shows a fluier, a romanian whistle, as has been described before with six fingerholes and windway on the back. The bore is cylindrical but narrows near the bottom end, so just looking at the apertures of the bore you get the impression of an inverted taper. Six-hole whistles of mostly identical construction are wide-spread over middle and eastern Europe, furulya, floghera, (bulgarian) duduk et al. are basically the same instrument.
Sometimes very strange scales of such instruments are mentioned and often attributed to very special local styles, IMHO this is in most cases due to the fact that these whistles have been made as souvenirs and are not tuned at all.

[ftdevilliers]

Does anyone know the dimensions of a Fluier? I would like to try to make one.

[MichaelLoos]

They are in no way standardized, they come in all sorts of sizes and pitches.
I can measure mine (which is not very good IMO, although it appears to be professionally made), also a bulgarian duduk in C (which is a good one), another one in A (no good at all...) and a hungarian furulya in F (very nice but a bit on the quiet side). Give me a couple of days.
I'm quite sure the good-or-not-so-good-issues are mostly caused by the windway and labium.

[ftdevilliers]

thanks. appreciate it.

[Lancelot]

Wow. Thanks to all of you guys for all the information and the links. I'm going to spend quite a while investigating and enjoying.

edit: Thanks to whoever moved my post to this forum. I'm sure that resulted in more answers than I would have got otherwise.

Also, to JackCampin: Maybe dA was having difficulties when you checked. I got several "internal server errors" from their site yesterday. I tried the link while ago and the page loaded completely in about two seconds on a 15 Mbps connection. I'm sorry if their problems caused you difficulties, and I appreciate your spending the time to try to get it.