Gusle
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Serbian_Gusle.jpg
The Gusle or gusla (Serbian: Гусле, Bulgarian: Гусла) is a single-stringed instrument used in the Balkans, not to be confused with Russian Gusli.
Gusle is most typically used to accompany the voice of the player (guslar) when telling and/or singing an epic story or legend, similar to the use of a guitar in the West.
Filip_Visnjic_guslar.jpg
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Serbian Gusle
Gusle (pluralia tantum) are Serbian national stringed instrument usually made of maple wood. Gusle have either one string (in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Dalmatia) or more (two) stringes (in Bosanska Krajina and Lika), whose string(s) is made of thirty horsehairs. A bow is used to pull over the strings and this creates a dramatic and sharp sound, being very expressive and rather difficult to master. Gusle consists of a wooden sound box covered with an animal skin, a neck with a beautifully carved head. It is held between the legs with the long neck supported on one thigh.
Guslars, should be individuals who are capable of committing to memory long narrative texts about heroes and events from the distant and to improvising new ones in the decasyllable metre (deseterac).
Gusle have played an important role in the history of Serbian epic poetry because the guslars — national singers, passed on national poems in this way for centuries, until the poems were recorded in writing. Most of their songs are about the era of Ottoman Turkish rule and struggle for indenpendence. With the efforts of Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic many of those ballads of Serbian epic poetry were collected and preserved early in the nineteenth century.
Media
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Bibliography
- Beatrice L. Stevenson, The Gusle Singer and His Songs. (with "Heroic Ballads of Serbia"), American Anthropologist 1915 Vol.17:58-68.
- Milne Holton and Vasa D. Mihailovich. Serbian Poetry from the Beginnings to the Present. New Haven: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1988.
External links
- Gusle player Petar Perunovic-Perun - Serbian epic "Rebellion against the Dahijas" (http://www.njegos.org/emigrants/ploca.htm), Recorded by Marsh Laboratories, Chicago 1920s
- The Montenegrian gusle player Petar Perunovic (http://njegosev.narod.ru/emigrants/perun.htm:)
- Poems of Saint Petar of Cetinje told by gusle player Rajo Vojinović (http://www.njegos.net/en/news/archives/200109/index.html?=tnnarchives200109.html)
- Serbian Epic Poems: The battle of Kosovo (http://www.kosovo.com/history/battle_of_kosovo.html:), Preface by Charles Simic, Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, Athens 1987
- Heroic Ballads of Servia (http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/hbs/) translated by George Rapall Noyes and Leonard Bacon, 1913nl:Gusle