Nai and the world of instruments in Moldova

These beautiful instruments are in the shop of a very famous nai maker in Durlești, a suburb of Chișinau. This is the instrument I am practicing for many hours every day.

Every music school has a hierarchy of instruments structured by many things that anthropologists love to study. For example, if I am practicing in a room with a piano and  a pianist comes to the door I always say - Vreți pianul? - which means - do you want to use the piano? If they need the piano I am happy to let them have the room. In Moldova, almost no one has the means or the space to have a piano at home, so piano students must practice at the Academy. Piano is the boss of equal tempered tuning around the world, which makes it very important for all of us. Țimbal players (cymbalom - Google it!) have a room all to themselves since their instruments are so large and must be tuned over and over again every day. Cobza players are pretty soft so they can practice almost anywhere.

That puts the rest of us in the practice hall, which can get pretty noisy. On the day the trumpet teacher is at the school the hall is filled with trumpet players warming up on everything from Hummel to Moldovan Roma village brass band tunes. The accordion players get lockers for storing instruments and always need a chair. Last week one of my instructors kept going into the hallway to ask the accordion players to take a break while we had class, but if they left they were replaced immediately by more accordion players. I do love the sound of the accordions in the hall! The fantastic clarinet players and violinists in the Academy are often in the halls, attempting to ignore the sounds of everyone else. On evenings that the nai players gather for lessons they always greet each other sympathetically and wish good health and progress. Everyone likes to wish each other success.

One of the best things about nai is the way that people go on and on about how beautiful it is. Pianists and accordionists often tell me that it has a very beautiful and special sound and that it must be very hard to find the notes, and I agree. Saxophonists and trumpet players like it because they do not have to play soft for it to be heard. Music school administrators have been especially interested in my study of nai and tell me that it is the most beautiful instrument. I have heard some fantastic performances on nai in the four months I have lived here. I meet more and more nai players, each with their own style. My teacher and I sat for an hour today looking at various nai players on the internet.

My own experiences tell me that playing nai is often like the proverbial patting your head while rubbing your stomach. You create vibrato with the left hand or diaphragm, flatten notes by dropping your jaw, and play scales by moving the instrument side to side. The standard pitch at the Academy is A-445 or sometimes even higher, while the standard pitch at the Liceul Porumbescu where I go  for lessons is A-440. The first position notes on the instrument are a G major scale (sol major in Moldova) so creating all twelve chromatic tones means that sometimes I must drop my jaw to play a higher note.

I am happy to say that I now know all twelve major and minor scales and arpeggios, dominant seventh chords, and diminished 7th chords. I have started serious work on some of the elements of folklore playing like double and triple tonguing and ornamenting below each note. And I am constantly working for speed. After weeks of those six hour practice sessions in the dark at the Academy I am finally feeling like I will play in public pretty soon.

The main complaint from my presentation at the American Resource Center was that I did not play the nai, although I showed it. When I present music from the White House I will play nai to commemorate the time that Moldovan musician Lubomir Iorga performed for Bill Clinton. Maybe I will play the Sârba lui Pompieru - dance of the firemen......