suka

Local name: suka
Classification: 3 Chordophones / 32 Composite chordophones / 321 Lutes / 321.3 Handle lutes / 321.32 Necked lutes / 321.322 Necked box lutes or necked guitars / 321.322-71 Necked box lutes or necked guitars sounded by bowing with a bow
Maker: Kuczkowski Andrzej
Date: 1992
Village / Town: Warsaw
Region: Mazovia
Country: Poland
Owner: Museum of Folk Musical Instruments in Szydłowiec
Inventory number: MS/1234
Description: back plate, ribs, neck, pegbox and endpin carved from one piece; four strings; underside pegs; flat fingerboard and tailpiece; both feet of the bridge go through the f-holes standing on the flat back plate; top plate lightly convex; f-holes without crosswise cuts
Decoration: fingerboard embellished with a round, open-work rosette
Measurements: 573 x 127-177 x 43 mm
Materials: wood, catgut, metal, string
Inscriptions: a slip of paper attached to the back plate says: Wykonał Andrzej Kuczkowski Warszawa 1992
Sound compass, tuning: in 5th
Performance practice: played in the vertical position (hung over the shoulder on a string or leaned on the knee); players applied side string shortening (so-called fingernail technique); the suka is known thanks to an item from the Biłogoraj area shown at the First Polish Music Exhibition in Warsaw in 1888 (written accound by Jan Karłowicz, sketch by Tadeusz Dowgird, 1888, watercolour painting by Wojciech Gerson, 1896); in the second half of the 19th c., and possibly at the beginning of the 20th c. it was used in the south of the Lublin region (Biłgoraj area), probably accompanied by a single-skin drum; now used by artists of the folk revival
Catalog card by: MLIM / Zbigniew J. Przerembski


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