Chankovuz, kubyz, dan moy, shankobyz, gopuz, vargan or zubanka – this is only a small part of the names of a reed music instrument that has come down to our days from ancient times.

The universal instrument created by our ancestors is popular today as well, because in order to learn to play on gopuzе it is not necessary to become a student of the music college or conservatory.

In Turkmen families, girls were taught to play the gopuz from childhood. And until their youth, the beautiful girls wore it as a "musical talisman", which is always at hand. The ancestors believed that the vibrations arising from sound production have a healing effect and can have a beneficial effect on human health.

The range of the Turkmen gopuz from the note do to the first octave, to the note si, allows you to play different rhythmic patterns imitating the sounds of birds, the sound of hooves, carpet weaving combs.

In film by Alty Karliyev “The Secrets of Mukam”, a collector of folk songs, researcher Viktor Alexandrovich Uspensky, who arrived in the Turkmen province, meets the first woman-bakhshi. Also in the film there is a vivid episode where rural girls, gathered on a hillock, hum the folk song "la-le", which is preceded by the hypnotic sounds of gopuz. Not only playing the dutar, but also the enchanting rhythms of gopuz attract the attention of the researcher.

The Turkmen gopuz consists of a metal horseshoe-shaped base with parallel elongated ends and a thin steel tongue attached in its middle. The gopuz player applies the instrument to his mouth and vibrates the tongue by pinching its curved tip. The oral cavity serves as a resonator, changing its volume, the performer amplifies the necessary harmonics.

Translated from the ancient Turkic language, the word "gop" means - high, sublime, and "uz" - a voice. In general, the meaning of the word is understood as "magic musical sound". Today gopuz can be heard with the folk instrument orchestra and solo in any corner of Turkmenistan.

Svetlana Chirtsova