Touloum (Pontic bagpipe)

After the kemenche, the touloum was the most widespread and best-loved instrument among the Pontic Greeks of eastern Pontus. A good touloum player (tulumtzis), as with other instruments, could move freely while playing, dance, and rouse the crowd with shouts of encouragement. In the heat of dancing and drinking, many players would even lie down in the street and keep playing, driving the dancers into wild rhythms.

The instrument was usually made by the player himself, which required special knowledge and great patience. The best skin was goatskin; sheepskin was rarely used. The animal was skinned carefully so that the hide came off whole, without cuts. It was then scraped clean on the inside and rubbed with salt and alum so that it would not rot and would tighten. After a few days of curing, it was soaked for about a week in a solution of ash and water (called "cateni"), or of slaked lime and water.

This loosened the hair so that it came away easily. Another way to remove the hair was with "malez": cornmeal was stirred into hot water to make a thick paste, which was spread hot on the inside of the skin and left for 3–4 days to ferment. The hair then came off easily. Finally the skin was left in milk for 2–3 days to whiten it.

Once free of hair, the skin was softened by rubbing it with glass, or against wood or stone. The back legs and tail were cut off, the skin was turned inside out and these openings were tied tightly with waxed string. It was turned right side out again, the neck was passed through one front leg opening and tied in the same way. Pieces of mirror or silk tassels were sometimes attached at the neck. The blowpipe (stomotiras) was then fixed into one front leg, either tied on the inside or folded and tied on the outside. Which leg took the blowpipe and which the chanter was simply a matter of what suited the player: to hold the bag under the left arm, the blowpipe went into the left leg and the chanter into the right, and the other way round for the right arm.

The blowpipe, also called "fyseron", was a conical piece of wood with a small flap of leather tied or nailed over its inner end, slightly larger than the hole. When the player blew, the flap opened and let air in; when the air pushed back, it closed the hole and kept the air inside. This valve let the player sing without having to keep inflating the bag. Without it, he had to block the hole with his tongue, and could not sing.

Around the lower end of the blowpipe there was a groove in which the skin was tied, so that it would not slip and would fit tightly. The chanter (angoxylo) is fixed in the opposite opening. It is always tied on the outside with a cord that has a button in the middle. The player first winds the cord 4–5 times around the groove of the chanter, so that the reeds sit inside the bag, and ties the skin firmly. He then wraps the rest of the cord around the button, so that there is no knot and he can easily undo it when he wants to change the reeds or tune the instrument.

In the hollow of the chanter there are two parallel pipes, once made of cane and today sometimes of metal. They are fixed with wax so that no air escapes, and each has five holes of the same size, evenly spaced. The pipes run from the end inside the bag to the inside of the bell. The reeds (tsimbonia) sit on these pipes, and they matter most for a good sound. The small cane tubes with their tongues, 4 to 6.5 centimetres long and 7 to 10 millimetres in diameter, are best cut after soaking in milk, which softens the cane. For the reeds to match, that is, to sound the same pitch, their tubes must have the same length and inner diameter, and their tongues the same length, width and thickness. As this is impossible, the problem is solved with wax.

A little wax at the base of the reed shortens the tongue and so changes its pitch. Another way is to scrape the tongue a little: the thicker it is, the higher ("zil") the sound; the thinner, the lower ("kapan"). All this is done so that both reeds sound exactly the same pitch, not to change the tuning, which is impossible with the same reeds. A thread can also be placed in the slit that forms the tongue: the closer the thread is to the base, the wider the tongue opens and the lower the sound, and vice versa.

The touloum is played with the bag held under the arm. The player, the tulumtzis, breathes with the diaphragm rather than the chest, and so can play for hours without tiring. Air pressure on the reeds comes from blowing through the blowpipe and from squeezing the bag. When he stops blowing for a moment, he presses the bag harder so that the pressure does not drop, and relaxes again as soon as he starts blowing. Thanks to this balance, the air pressure on the reeds, and with it the pitch of the notes, stays steady. The usual fingering is the index and middle fingers of the left hand on the top two holes, and the index, middle and ring fingers of the right hand on the other three. Each finger covers both holes on the two parallel pipes.

Good playing is marked by the "ornaments" with which the player constantly decorates the melody. These are mainly quick grace notes and a 'breaking' of the voice, where a melody note is repeated quickly after the note just above or below it. Alongside these ornaments, by closing only one of the two facing holes, sometimes on one pipe and sometimes on the other, the player achieves a peculiar polyphonic sound (called "diplasman").