On Saturday my wife and I wandered into a Turkish music shop here in oz to buy an ud CD. I asked the Turkish born shop keeper for the best solo ud player of Turkey and he gave me a recording of Ergin Kizilay playing solo ud music. I don’t know whether he is `the best’ ud player of Turkey - but the performance and recording quality is fantastic –with the musical composition characterised by a Spanish tinge but in reality totally Arabic.
But that was not the interesting part. On the back of the CD it shows the instrument and yes it has frets! I told my Lebanonese wife that this is unusual and her reply was `what do you mean unusual…all uds HAVE frets’ I informed this was not the case and it seems that this generialisation does appear to be wrong. On my newly created ud page I have included a photograph of a ud player playing a unfretted instrument. It’s a bit dark and probably not clear enough from the original to see a non-fretted instrument. The point IS not all uds are fretted. Here is the picture: http://bachplucked.com/ud/ Regards, Michael. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now --
