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The Serbs living in the villages of Makád, Lórév and Szigetszentmárton in Hungary, on Danub'’s Czepel island, have preserved the njenjara, an ancient folk instrument. They sometimes gather at house parties to enjoy the sound of the njenjara, which is also called "mare's head" (kobilina glava) and "blind man's fiddle" (slepačka violina). They were played in times ofold by folk musicians at inns on vast expanses of grazing land between Kecskemét and Szeged, and nearly each and every farmstead (salaš) in the northern Tisa River basin had one.
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Janoš Vrabel, a painter from Čoka, in Serbia's Banat region, is the only master craftsman in the country still making ancient musical instruments such as – njenjara, gajde (bagpipes) and kobza. Vrabel is a versatile man. He is a painter, woodworker, smelter, potter, explorer... Vrabel's house is in a quiet little alley overtaken by greenery. It has many rooms, studios and workshops. Inside the house, the walls are adorned with many bagpipes, small animal skin bags, kobzas, njenjaras, violas, hollowed cattle horns that produce a sound not unlike that of a shepherd's flute.
Janoš can tan a goat's skin, has a potter's wheel, a small potter's furnace for baking ceramics, a counter for doing woodwork, a handy foundry, while his shelves accommodate a host of different tools. He makes earthenware, carves folk motifs on plum wood sticks, then pours molten brass and lead into them and shapes them into chanters and drones on bagpipes. The shepherd's sticks he makes sometimes carry a whole host of images of astral bodies, towers, well sweeps, sheep and Puli shepherd dogs – all this made of brass and executed superbly.
In addition to bagpipes, kobzas and njenjaras, Vrabel has also made several cellos, and a barrel-size bull fiddle, all manner of drums, shepherd's flutes, many varieties of tamburitzas, zithers... And, he can also play all these instruments.
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- I make all kinds of bagpipes, including the so-called baranjske, levčanske, vlaške, erske, Macedonian, Hungarian, the large Mokrin bagpipes, dvonjke, sopile. This means virtually all types of bagpipes used in the Balkans and in Pannonia. At the time, I toured with Josef Kozak, Pest's best bagpiper and the man who knows everything about bagpipes, the regions of Banat, Baranja, the Morava River basin, Homolje, Bosnia and Hungary. We collected information about this musical instrument. Bagpipes are an old and somewhat "devilish" musical instrument. In ancient times, bagpipes were used neither to make music nor for merrymaking, but to dispel evil and drive away the devil. When shepherds took their livestock to pastureland to graze in springtime, there would always be a bagpiper who led the way for the flock and chased away the demons with the sound of bagpipes. In Romania, shepherds still play their flutes as they head their flocks of sheep to graze. It's a proven fact that bagpipes emit high-frequency sounds and tones that even wolves find intolerable! In earlier times, bagpipers in Hungary were mostly found among shepherds, while among the Serbs – bagpipers were usually millers. Millers of old knew that the devil lay in wait in the dead of night by the wind shaft, whether it was for the water wheel of a watermill or for a windmill. In this case, bagpipes were used as an antidote of sorts.
Their bag is made of goatskin, as the goat is an animal a bit on the devilish side. Hence, a wood-carved horned devil's head is often found where the bag and chanter join. The mouthpieces on bagpipes were once made from elder wood, and elder is a demonic tree. The elder, the goat, the devil...
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Gypsies fear the devil. There are hundreds of splendid Gypsy tamburitza players, but I have not yet seen a Gypsy bagpiper. A bagpiper, they say, is in collusion with the devil! If you hang bagpipes on a nail on the wall, and their bag is still full of air, they will play on their own. This occurs as a result of a difference in air pressure. You open the door, and the bagpipes start playing! When this happens, old people would whisper: "The devil is playing the bagpipes" – says Vrabel. |
- Njenjara is a complicated instrument. It is neither a tambura nor a violin. It resembles a "mare's head". It has strings, like the violin, but, instead of the bow, the musician turns a small wheel on it that plucks the strings. In place of keys, njenjaar's body has wooden plugs. The combined handling of the small wheel, the strings and the plugs produces a nya-nye-nya-nye sound, hence its name – njenjara. They also called it the "blind man's fiddle". In the past, blind people would tour the farmsteads and homesteads of Pannonia with the njenjara. Usually, a little girl would assist them and they played for a piece of bread, a piece of bacon or for money. No one turned them away because the blind njenjara players also had a magical role. After performing they would be led to the chicken shack(s) to touch the hens bottoms with their stick to "enhance egg-laying", walked around the homestead with their njenjara to chase away all evil, or the made an offering in the kitchen of a cupful of milk with a knife to "prevent stealing milk from the cow(s) udder(s)". Farmers believed blind njenjara players brought good luck. Njenjaras used to be played to shepherds, stable boys and hired hands at inns, but in Pannonia it was an instrument played, for the most part, at farmsteads. At remote farmsteads, the njenjara was played in wintertime during merrymaking and festivals, and when neighbors came to visit and sampled the new wine. I use walnut fir wood to make the njenjara body, wild pear for the small wheel because it has a hard and dense structure. Here, have a look at the njenjara. Indeed, it resembles a mare's head. It is well known that Russians used horses' sculls to make the balalaika... My sons Mišika, Jančika and I are the only njenjara players in the country. But young people, young musicians and school children, are returning to ethno music – says Vrabel.
Kobza – he continues – is a string instrument. It is similar than the lute, but is not a lute. This ancient musical instrument is originally from Asia. It is related to the Arab lute (al ud), the saz and the Bosnian šargija. But, kobza has a shorter neck that only measures some 15 or so centimeters. Ethnic-Hungarians living in Moldavia still use kobza as a musical instrument at various festivities. Several unique samples of ancient kobzas have been preserved there. I started to make them on the basis of what I was able to find in books. I use walnut and fir wood to make the kobza.
Janoš Vrabel took the njenjara, and began to play, and in an instant moved time back a hundred years, invoking farmsteads, well sweeps, lonely inns, vast expanses, horses galloping, goaded by the sound coming from the "mare's head"...
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