The
Saz

The saz, more formally the bağlama, is the most important folk instrument of Turkey and the wider Turkic world. A long-necked lute with three courses of strings and movable frets, it has for centuries been the instrument of the aşık — the wandering minstrel-bards — and of Alevi devotional gatherings, where it is held in such reverence it is sometimes called 'the stringed Quran.' Its frets are placed for the microtonal intervals of Turkish modal music, intervals that fall between the keys of a piano. That is the clearest difference from a beginner guitar, whose fixed metal frets divide every octave into the twelve equal semitones of Western tuning.

Played fingerstyle or with a flexible plectrum, the saz rings and shimmers, the lower strings often acting as a drone while the melody winds above them in the makam — the Turkish modal system. The unmetered solo improvisation, the taksim, lets a player explore a mode freely before a song begins, pausing and answering like speech. Listen for the microtonal bends that fall between Western notes, the ringing sustain of the strings, and the way a slow saz piece seems to wander and search rather than resolve.