When the Irish Bouzouki goes to Bulgaria...

Rounding out the first half of 2024's tunes is this Kopanitsa I wrote several years ago during a trip down a rabbit hole of Bulgarian/Irish Fusion - probably not the first bouzouki player to be introduced to Bulgarian music via Andy Irvine! I named it 'Winter Sunsets', which seemed like a fitting tune to play this week as we approach the Winter Solstice here in Australia!
Through a series of fortunate events the tune saw its debut during a support slot for the legend himself with the Edinburgh Folk Society. Inspired by Andy's recollection of his own travels, a few months later I found my way to Bulgaria to the Rila Music Exchange where I learned a lot more about the music, including the ornamentation and some of the extremely jazzy accompaniments they like to utilise, which I tried to incorporate into this rendition.
#irishbouzouki #folkmusic #celticmusic #bouzouki #2024tnightlytunes #kopanitsa #bulgarianfolkmusic #11/8 #oddtimesignatures #australianfolkmusic #bulgarianfolklore

[@EamonCoughlan]

Tip: Play at 1.25x speed for a more typical Bulgarian sound! Unfortunately I can't play that fast with all the ornamentation 😂

[@bearjingle5316]

Have you tried any other brand of bouzoukis that'd you recommend? I'm from Australia so it's slim pickings here.

[@EamonCoughlan]

It depends on your budget. The 'entry level' ones tend to be from Hora in Romania, my first bouzouki was from an online vendor called 'foolfisch' who I think had them made by Hora, maybe to a custom design. It was pretty bad but it was cheap and it had the bouzouki sound, and playable after a good set up. From my limited experience with them, I haven't been impressed by any of the mid-level ones (eg. $1000+ factory models). I think if you're spending more than $1500 you might as well just get a luthier-made instrument because it's going to be orders of magnitude better than those for 2x or so the price.
The ideal would probably be to get a decent second hand one relatively cheap on marketplace. Greek bouzoukis are more common (in Melbourne at least) and I see them pretty regularly at $500-1000 though I don't know anything about the quality.
If you can afford a few thousand for a new luthier instrument, mine was made by Daniel Hoban in Melbourne and I've been extremely happy with it, Daniel is also a really nice guy to work with.

[@conceptSde]

I‘m from Europe (Germany), which is obvously more bouzouki-ish. The Hora instruments which are from Romania and shipped world wide by Thomann are pretty horrible from my pov (tried two and sent them back the next day). My suggestion if you can’t afford a luthier instrument: Look for the Trinity College zouks (made in Japan), at least the older ones are pretty good if you find one down under (never tried a new one). Fender also had an Irish Bouzouki (Korean made) for a short time some 10+ years back. Not really great, but a really usable instrument with a decent pickup and preamp installed. Both would be around 250 (Fender) to 500 (Trinty) USD second hand.