Bouzouki the "tetrachordo" ("four-course") has four pairs of strings. The name "bouzouki" comes from the Turkish word "bozuk", meaning "broken" or "modified", and comes from a particular re-entrant tuning called "bozuk düzen", which was commonly used on its Turkish counterpart, the "saz-bozuk". It is in the same instrumental family as the mandolin and the lute. Originally the body was carved from a solid block of wood, similar to the saz, but upon its arrival in Greece in the early 1910s it was modified by the addition of a staved back borrowed from the Neapolitan mandola, and the top angled in the
Bouzouki Bouzouki The bouzouki (; also "buzuki"; , ; plural "bouzoukia" ) is a musical instrument popular in Greece that was brought there in the 1900s by Greek immigrants from Turkey, and quickly became the central instrument to the rebetiko genre and its music branches. A mainstay of modern Greek music, the bouzouki has a flat front, usually heavily inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The instrument is played with a plectrum and has a sharp metallic sound, reminiscent of a mandolin but pitched lower. There are two main types of bouzouki: the "trichordo" ("three-course") has three pairs of strings (known as courses) and