Dombyra in the making. 2017 Terekly-Mekteb

Every morning at 7am Alibiy unlocks his workshop and sings his ‘dombyra greeting’ to help him tune himself into a ‘luthier gear'. After the singing, he has a cup of fresh tea and cigarette, and then the ‘magic begins'. Alibiy makes dombyras that are light and sonorous and sells them at local prices. In order to support his workshop, Alibiy keeps his prices relatively low. He said that the social-economic climate for the industry remains poor, although, during the last two years dombyra-making had fairly big public support. Alibiy stated: ‘This puts considerable pressure on me. In order to make this work, I must adapt to the economic environment. There are not enough master-students to keep this tradition of instrument making going. Young people, like in the past, leave the homeland and look for work in big cities. They need ‘big buck' to build their lives as quickly as possible. The Noghai population is small. Demand for the dombyra is not great, but I am grateful that people still ask me to make them one’.