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Domra is a lute-type instrument with an oval body, a long finger-board and three or four strings. It is played with a plectrum – small piece of wood, plastic, tortoise or copper. It is believed to be adapted from the dombra, an instrument played by Mongols invaders Russia. The domra has numerous cousins in Pakistan and Afghanistan, dambura in Kazakhstan, dumbura in Kurdistan, tanbûra, tanboura in Greece and in Balkans, tanbura, tanburitsa in Turkey; kabîr turkî in Iraq. While in Orient these instruments are played sitting on earth, Russians play it standing or sitting on a bench.

The first mention of domra can be found in 921 A.D., in the book of Ibn Fadlan, an arab traveler in the Volga region.  The domra was an instrument of skoromokhi – Russian troubadours, acrobats and jongleurs, bear’s trainers and market musicians. They formed ensembles of domras: domrichko (soprano), domra (ténor), domra bassistaïa (basse).

A Russian scientist M. Imkhanitski has identified domra on Russian icons and miniatures in Evangelic manuscripts and Book of Psalms of XVI century as an instrument played by musicians of King David.

This leads to further hypothesis and connotations with the primitive original lutes of Sumers and India. The name of a lute-like instrument of ancient Egypt was deciphered by Champollion as tanbur. Recently the archeological diggings in ancient Sogdiana, near Samarkand, revealed a statuette of III century B.C. showing a woman with a lute. In the Middle Ages this instrument was called bar-bat, translated by Arabs as oud, meaning “wood”. Was it not a predecessor of domra?

In XVII century Russia the performances of the skoromokhi were banned by an ukaz of the tzar Alexei Mikhailovich Tishaishiy (“The Gentlest”), and domras, considered as “instruments of devil”, were massively burned in public auto-da-fe’s. The domra vanished from that time, as the ukaz banned playing, making and even keeping the instruments.

The resurrection of domra came in late XIX century, when A.Andreev, the farther of the Russian folk orchestra, has reconstructed the perished instruments.

Actually, Andreev made a mistake, using a hemispherical balalaika as a prototype for domra, but the final design, developed by “Russian Stradivari”, Simeon Nalimov, proved finally to be true to the historical domras, as they are seen in miniatures and as they have been later revealed by the archaeologists in Novgorod. Nalimov made about thirty trials before he produced the instrument in 1896. His domras, from piccolo to contrabass. All these instruments had three strings, were chromatique (Mi, La, Re in different octaves, Si, Mi, La for piccolo). In 1908 the four-stringed version was built by musician M.Karaulov (pseudonym G.Lyubimov) and master S.Bourov. The four-string domra, less loud then the Andreev’s instrument, is tunes in fifth, which opens for domra the full repertoire of mandolin and violin. S.Nalimov also made four-string domras. Now, during 20 years, a domrist V.Nikouline, with the help of master A. Iviévitch, plays on a mixed version of three-four strings: the bass string alternatively is dropped or used.

Domra, played solo, ensemble or in orchestra, combines the qualities of timbre, attack, flexibility, swiftness and melody. Its diapason enlarges, encompassing the folk, classic and modern music. Among the prominent domrists are Alexéïev, Alexandrov, Bélov, Volskaïa, Nikouline, Lyssenko, Mikhéïev, Chytenkov, Krouglov, Iakovlev, Tsygankov.

Last modified: 01/18/07