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Script
One of the most ancient musical instruments of Kazakh nation is “Dombra”. I got attraction to this great musical instrument when I was 13-14 years old. At first, I was into music and singing, and then I saw ancient samples of dombras and thought that I could craft them myself.
My name is Narbek Oirat, from Ohan kind (Kazakh kind). So I can say that playing dombra - is a passion of my family. My father Oirat is a traditional singer and virtuosic dombra player. In principle each of my family are playing on dombra.
Dombra itself -is ancient Kazakh instrument. Her image prevails on petroglyphs dated in 5-6 century B.C. There also were found Hummel statue of man with dombra, ceramic dishes with image of dombra and much more. Dombra is very sympathetic to soul of Kazakh-nomad. Her strings are made of ram’s guts. The wood - is her main body material. Dombra was manufactured by hollowing out from the solid piece of wood with variety of tree species. Well, you can tell that musical instruments are “friends” of Kazakh-nomads, every person chose a like-minded “friend” - someone chose kobyz, someone sybyzgy, someone dombra. But only dombra has become pervasive. Kazakh people have different sizes of dombra. Dombra is differs on a regional basis: West, East, Central Kazakhstan. Each of them have special characteristic and traditional names: in Sary-Arka (Central Kazakhstan) it’s kalap dombra, on West it’s kozy-kuiruk dombra, on Zhetysu there were different kinds of dombras. But the Zhirshy-dombra was completely different. Kazakhs have other instruments, which don’t mute down the voice of Zhirshy (epos-singer), dombra’s sound should be soft. Sary-Arka dombra differs by quantity of “perne”, usually no more than 12-14, neck should be short and wide. That defines the range of music - so that’s why shekpe kui was performed on this dombra. West dombra has long and thin neck - that’s why she has wide range of music so masters can perform tokpe kui on it. At the same time, there were used two types of dombra in Zhetysu - there were performed not only tokpe kui, but shekpe kui. You can even say that the art of Zhetysu is an intermediate between those two types of kui. But as I noticed, Jirshi played on different dombras. They were like “Kozy Kuiruk Dombra” but larger. For example, dombras of Makhambet, Dina, Muryn Jirau, Kyzyl Jirau and so on, that survived till nowadays. There are several dombras of famous steppe musicians in the National Musical Instruments Museum of Ykylas. For example, dombras of Abaken Hasenov, of Dina, of Makhambetoa and others. I often make copies of ancient dombras by taking a special permission.
Yes, dombra accompanies Kazakh people for the whole life from the ancient times, but now it’s being modernized for present aims. One of such masters is me. For example, the customer needs Dombra inlaid with silver and bone and something like that - we, masters, aspire to make different kinds of it.
Musicians nowadays seek to make the whole world familiar with dombra, that’s why we make Bariton-Dombra and Tenor-Dombra. It all depends on contemporary aims. Same as singers. For example, there are special dombras for girls and women.
Kuishis’ dombras are different depending on the style of performing. For, example, someone wants dombra with light string tension, someone likes it tight and harder. Sometimes there are orchestral dombras in need. They all have their own specific that depends on way of performance. Experience and deep knowledge is very needful in making dombras. For example, my experience in making dombras is 35-40 years now. In our time we also learned this knowledge from famous masters, and to be honest - we are still learning. There is no limit to perfection. As I said earlier - fantastic experience is necessary for crafting dombras. We aspire to transfer our experience to growing generation, aspire to extend the number of our students.
We also have our own children and we want to give them our mastery, and that’s what we do. I always aspire to accustom them to the great art of crafting this sacral musical instrument.
I’ve already said that there are a lot of different kinds of Dombra and each one has its own specific. Someone prefers Kalap Dombra, someone prefers Kozy-Kuiruk. It all depends on aim and destination same as on singer’s voice. And all my knowledge I aspire to transfer to growing generation.
This instrument is Sary-Arka Dombra, I was crafting it depending on ancient samples. But I’ve increased its body a bit and made the neck longer - to make it more comfortable to play for modern musicians. I was making this dombra the old way - by gouging it from the solid piece of wood. Dombra looks very modest in comparison with modern ones.