mielec suka

Mielec suka is an old Polish string instrument, belonging to folk chordophones group, resembling violin with its construction. The head is in the shape of nail, the base has two short legs leant on the top board. The four strings are attached to the casters that are embedded at the bottom.

mielec suka

The watercolor by Stanislaw Putiatycki that presents "a peasant with a violin in the vicinity of Mielec" (1840) is in the collection of the National Ethnographic Museum.

The watercolor has been done very carefully which enables a perceptive analysis of Mielec suka. Placing the fiddle while playing vertically on the leg of a sitting player indicates knee fiddle and a wide neck suggests the fingernail technique.
The instrument's design features imply that it can be considered a hybrid of already well-known violin and obsolescent knee form. Putiatycki's watercolor is the evidence that those relict forms of chordophones still functioned in folk musical practice in the mid-nineteenth century. Maria Pomianowska and Eve Dahlig called a new discovery – Mielec suka in order to distinguish it from Bilgoray suka.

mielec suka-legend
inne

22.03.2013

The recordings ended up in the National Ethnographic Museum. We recorded the entire tonal and sound range of more than twenty folk instruments. Also sound bank was established which you can use to create contemporary instrumentals. Some of the instruments are put into motion-sensitive controllers; by using them we will conduct workshops for children in May. Moreover we will work out lesson plans, which based on the on-line version of our sound bank will enable to carry out lessons for all interested teachers from primary schools from whole Poland.