Santur

These ancient strings sing out like the voice of a seventy foot metal bird announcing the first rays of sunrise to a silent forest. You grab the nearest hand and swing together in a swirling, sweeping motion that stirs the waiting world into action so bold that every eye in the room begins to cry with such emotion and passion that even once hard hearts now become a boiling mass of liquid ready to pour out over the dance floor. The santur was invented in ancient Babylonian (1600-911 BCE) and neo-Assyrian (911-612 BCE) eras. This instrument was traded and traveled to different parts of the middle east and each country customized and designed their own versions to adapt to their musical scales and tunings. The original santur was made with tree bark, stones and stringed with goat intestines. Many instruments around the world at least in part, derive from the santur. Similar forms of the santur have been present in neighboring cultures like India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Armenia, Turkey, and Iraq for centuries. The Indian santoor is thicker, more rectangular, and has more strings. Its corresponding mallets are also held differently. The Chinese yangqin originated from the Persian santur. The Iraqi santur has, since its inception, been chromatic and allows for full Maqam modulations. The Roma people introduced a derivative of the santur called the cymbalum to Eastern Europe. The Greek santouri is also derived from the santur, and in Nikos Kazantzakis' classic novel Zorba the Greek Zorba plays the santouri. This sound uses the following file from Freesound: http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=125654