Baglamas particularly popular with musicians who needed an instrument transportable enough to carry around easily or small enough to shelter under a coat. During parts of the 20th century, players of the bouzouki and baglamas were persecuted by the government, and the instruments were smashed by the police. The name comes from Turkish , a similar instrument. Baglamas The baglamas () (plural "baglamades") or baglamadaki (), a long necked bowl-lute, is a plucked string instrument used in Greek music; it is a version of the bouzouki pitched an octave higher (nominally D-A-D), with unison pairs on the four highest strings and
Bouzouki the pair are tuned to the same note. In the two lower-pitched (bass) courses, the pair consists of a thick wound string and a thin string tuned an octave apart. On the bouzouki the lower-pitched string comes first in these courses, the reverse of most other instruments with octave-paired courses (such as the 12-string guitar, charango or bajo sexto). These 'octave strings' add to the fullness of the sound and are used in chords and bass drones (continuous low notes that are played throughout the music). The guitar-like tuning was introduced by composer and soloist Manolis Hiotis, who found it