Interview: A Greek professional luthier's story

Situated in a small alley of Piraeus, the humble, dusty workshop of Christos Spourdalakis, that resembles more that of a carpenter, hardly indicates that it is the place where some of the finest musical instruments in Greece are crafted.

Since 1979, Spourdalakis, a self-taught luthier, along with his team of skilled craftsmen, has been making lute-family instruments, specializing in those featured in traditional Greek music: the world famous bouzouki, tiny baglamas, lutes, mandolins, as well as the folk Greek guitar.

Spourdalakis started experimenting with the art of lutherie at the age of 17, out of his love of rebetiko music, the urban Greek popular song, but also out of ...curiosity.

"It was a mystery to me -- what makes a piece of wood, when shaped as a violin, sound like a violin, when shaped as a bouzouki, sound like a bouzouki and, when shaped as guitar, sound like a guitar? It was a wonder how the same material could put on so many all-charming, different voices," he said.

He made his first instrument on his own, out of rather unsuitable materials, with the help of foreign manuals. "I engaged in this craft that proved so much more difficult than I expected ...The process however was so enchanting, that I immediately started building another instrument and then the next ...until now," Spourdalakis said.

Spourdalakis' workshop is one of the few vertical integration lutherie units in Greece, meaning that every stage of the instrument's production, all the way from a raw wood log to a fully playable bouzouki, takes place right there, allowing him to control and guarantee for the quality of the product.

"Although I started out alone, in the following years more people joined me and in a common understanding of our craft, we created a reservoir of knowledge that is updated with new techniques in search of ever improving results."

His primary guide to perfection is no other than trial and error. "I believe that there is no greater teacher than mistakes, than this constant concern to spot and fix what causes the divergence from the desired result," the luthier explained.

As the construction of a lute instrument demands a combination of soft and harder types of wood, the materials of choice are fir, maple and walnut wood, as well as Brazilian and Indian rosewood, which is extremely expensive and hard to find.

The workshop's team of five craftsmen, under the guidance of Spourdalakis, brings to mind a small-scale orchestra in the way the one takes cue from the other. From cutting and processing the wood to assembling the instrument's neck and applying the varnish, every little detail counts, as it can dramatically alter the final sound of the instrument.

Precision and attention to detail are key factors for a flawless result. However, innovation also plays a major role, as this type of instruments have enormous untapped potentials, according to Spourdalakis.

In this context, the chief luthier and his partner Giannis Katos introduced a modern material -- carbon fiber, in their otherwise traditional artifacts, tackling a centuries-old problem of wooden music instruments that used to directly affect their performance: the gradual loss of their neck stability over time and humidity changes.

It takes about one month for one person to build a bouzouki from scratch, but this depends on the quality standards of the craftsman and other factors, such as elaborate decorations.

"For us five working here, the number of instruments we make in one month can vary from 6 to 8, but it can also be as few as 3, if the standards of our orders are extremely high," Spourdalakis said.

The price of a bouzouki hand-made by Spourdalakis ranges from 1,000 to 4,000 euros (about 1,059 to 4,237 U.S. dollars), significantly higher than that of a factory-made instrument. However the workshop has seen its orders surge in recent years.

"Over the years the effectiveness of our work has increased and this is largely appreciated. As a result we are doing better every year, which allows us to look at the future with optimism," he said.

Orders from abroad account for as much as 40 percent of his sales, which can be explained by the growing appeal of traditional Greek music to musicians around the world, but also by the high esteem of well-crafted instruments.

According to Spourdalakis, traditional lutherie is a field that has met an explosion of interest, as the number of luthiers has skyrocketed from 15, in the late '70s, to 273 today. Regularly organized seminars and workshops are often sold out, as the craft keeps attracting a vast number of young people.

For musicians, who are emotionally connected to their instruments, the luthier has to be a person of trust. Working together to attain the holy grail of the perfect sound, luthiers and musicians share a common passion and a special relationship.

"I once saw a musician cry when he first played the instrument we made for him. This was a moment of great satisfaction and emotion for me: he was in tears of joy, because he had found the instrument that perfectly expressed him," Spourdalakis told Xinhua. Endi