ELIAS HATZI Bouzouki Story

 

The story about Elias Hatzi bouzouki as told by Elias himself.

 

The story to my bouzouki is that I get a lot of people coming up to me after my performances asking me about it. Everyone knows what a bouzouki looks like and after seeing my one with a flat back is interested and curious where I got it from and what sort of a bouzouki it is.

 

As anyone who has ever played one knows, the traditional bowl back bouzouki is quite hard to play standing up, so I sat and thought and came up with the idea of designing one myself with a flat back, one very similar to an Irish bouzouki. The Irish bouzouki is a hybrid instrument that has evolved over the past 25 or so years. The story is that I didn’t get my bouzouki from anywhere, it's a custom made bouzouki that I sat down and designed myself. It's something I thought about and then I started drawing out the designs and measurements for it, and then I found a luthier which is an instrument maker and I gave him my drawing designs and he made it for me.
 

Everything on the bouzouki was designed by me, even the inlay work where I wanted it to go on the bouzouki. You are all probably wondering why I designed a Greek bouzouki with a flat back? Simply because I wanted something unique and different, and a bouzouki that would be more comfortable for me to hold and play.