Unique one-stringed lutes displayed

TIRANA, May 30 – Some 30 unique one-string lutes, traditional epic song musical instruments known as ‘lahute’ in Albanian, were displayed last weekend at the Museum of History in Tirana.
Organized by the Albanian Institute of Science and the Inventory Centre for Cultural Heritage, the exhibition was held in the frame of events commemorating Albania’s 100th anniversary of independence.
The displayed lutes of different unique carvings featured folklore symbols of mythology.
“This is a small exhibition but bears great values of the nation. Ahead we have a great challenge for the protection and conservation of cultural heritage,” said Culture Minister Aldo Bumci.
Jaho Brahaj, a specialist in musicology, says little interest by those inheriting lutes and rising purchases by foreigners are making the single-string instrument endangered.
“The goal of the exhibition is to attract attention for the promotion of this musical instrument, the eldest in Europe, to be included in our museum collections and those of state institutions specialized in its study and promotion. We want to urge Albanian collectors to collect this instrument before it is too late and make it popular to public opinion especially youth and pupils,” said Brahaj.
Both Albania and Kosovo are coordinating efforts to put epic songs under UNESCO protection as endangered cultural heritage currently sung and played by only a dozen of elderly men in northern Albania.
Albania was supposed to submit the file on the epic songs known as the “Eposi i Kreshnikeve” for UNESCO protection in early 2012 but decided to postpone the application until Kosovo is recognized by the UN.
The Songs of the Frontier Warriors (K쯧롋reshnik촨) are the best-known cycle of northern Albanian epic verse. Still sung by elderly men playing the one-stringed “lahuta,” these epic rhapsodies are the literary reflections of legends portraying and glorifying the heroic feats of warriors of the past. The main cycle, that of “Mujo and Halili,” preserves much of the flavour of other heroic cultures such as those mirrored in Homer’s Iliad in Greek, Beowulf in English, El Cid in Spanish, the Chanson de Roland in French, the Nibelungenlied in German and the Russian Byliny, says Albanian studies specialist Robert Elsie.