Chonguri

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Chonguri

 

(1) A Georgian four-stringed plucked instrument. The chonguri has a pear-shaped body that is truncated at the bottom. The long neck, which has fastened or carved frets, terminates in a curved pegbox with three pegs, one for each of the main strings; the short fourth string fastens to a peg midway up the side of the neck. The silk or nylon strings are tuned to D, G, and B of the one-line octave and D of the two-line octave. Played primarily by women, the chonguri is used to accompany singing. Improved versions of the chonguri are used in Georgian folk-instrument orchestras.

(2) One of the names of the panduri, a Georgian three-stringed plucked instrument.

REFERENCES

Arakchiev, D. “O gruzinskikh muzykal’nykh instrumentakh iz sobranii Moskvy i Tiflisa.” In Materialy i issledovaniia po izucheniiu narodnoi pesni i muzyki: Trudy muzykal’no-etnograficheskoi komissii, vol. 2. Moscow, 1908. Pages 124–25, 137, 155, 170, 190, 198, and 200.
Vertkov, K., G. Blagodatov, and E. Iazovitskaia. Atlas muzykal’nykh instrumentov narodov SSSR, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1975. Pages 127–28.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.