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For the multi-string instrument, see Gusli.
Serbian Gusle.jpg
typical Gusle.
String instrument
Classification Bowed string instrument
Hornbostel–Sachs classification 321.321-71
(Bowl lyre sounded by a bow)
Developed 9th century AD
Related instruments

The gusle (Serbian Cyrillic: гусле, Albanian: lahuta) is a single-stringed musical instrument (and musical style) traditionally used in the Dinarides region of the Southeastern Europe.[1]

The instrument is always accompanied by singing; musical folklore, specifically epic poetry. The gusle player (guslar) holds the instrument vertically between his knees, with the left hand fingers on the strings. The strings are never pressed to the neck, giving a harmonic and unique sound.[1]


The term gusle is common term to all Slavic languages and denotes a musical instrument with strings. The gusle should, however, not be confused with the Russian gusli, which is a psaltery-like instrument; nor with the Czech term for violin, housle.


The varieties of the guslar music are based on cultural basis;[2] the content of the stories of each ethnic group is different, as different epic poems are used to accompany the instrument. There is minor differing characteristics of vocality in the regions of Southeast Europe. The design of the instrument is identical; only the design of the neck and head varies with ethnic or national motives (Serbian gusle has Serbian motif, etc.).

The gusle consists of a wooden sound box, the maple being considered as the best material (therefore often the instrument is referred to as "gusle javorove" - maple gusle), covered with an animal skin and a neck with an intricately carved head. A bow is pulled over the string/s (made of horsetail), creating a dramatic and sharp sound, expressive and difficult to master. The string is made of thirty horsehairs. The most common and traditional version is single-stringed (in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Zagora in Croatia), while a much less version is the two-stringed (in Bosanska Krajina and in Lika). They are held between the legs with the long neck supported on one thigh.

Albanian lahuta[edit]

The Lahuta (Serbian: gusle) which is used by Gheg Albanians of northernmost Albania (Malësia[3]) for the singing of epic songs or Albanian Songs of the Frontier Warriors.

It is played by a rapsodi. The Albanian songs are octosyllable, in relation to the Decasyllable Serbian, and a more primitive type of rhyming is regular.[citation needed]

The use of Lahuta has deteriorated, and now traditionally mastered in Highlands and Malësi e Madhe District. The epic songs are mostly sung accompanied by the çifteli, which has replaced the use of the lahuta in some villages.[4]

Croatian gusle[edit]

A gusle instrument from Zagora

The Gusle has been used by the Croats in Herzegovina, the South Croatian hinterland, Lika, as well as in Bosnia and Western Bosnia as an accompaniment for epic poetry for hundreds of years. Often they were constructed by the singers and players themselves, shepherds or even by specialized Gusle builders from urban areas.

Most lyrics center around historical figures who played an important role in Croatian history (often folk heroes who died tragical deaths, such as hajduks) or significant historical events (mostly battles against invaders or occupying powers).

Perhaps the most famous Croatian guslar poets was Andrija Kačić Miošić, an 18th-century monk who created and collected many gusle lyrics and songs throughout the regions, which are still sung today. Croatia's most famous contemporary guslar (gusla player) is Mile Krajina.

A "Guslar" playing to a group of people

Although gusle are not a part of mainstream popular music, the instrument has been included into songs by some musicians such as Marko Perković Thompson, Mate Bulić and Dario Plevnik. Gusle recordings can be heard on a number of CD compilations published by Croatian ethnologists, which are in most cases distributed locally by the artists themselves.

Montenegrin gusle[edit]

Gusle are a national instrument in Montenegro and without the word about gusle not a single story about Montengrin music, folklore and tradition would be complete. In carving the instrument, special attention is given to the head, so on Montenegrin gusle, one can find a large number of wonderful carved shapes - most often it is a double-headed eagle, like the one from the state heraldry, the shape of the mountain Lovcen, or the characters from the Montenegrin history, such as Petar II Petrović Njegoš.

Serbian gusle[edit]

A Herzegovinian sings to the gusle (drawing from 1823). Herzegovinian epic poems were often sung to the accompaniment of this traditional bowed string instrument.
Filip Višnjić (1767–1834), a blind Serbian guslar
The sound of the Serbian gusle

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The Serbian gusle (pluralia tantum) has one or two strings and is usually made of maple wood. A guslar is an individual capable of reproducing and composing poems about heroes and historical events to the accompaniment of this instrument, usually in the decasyllable meter. There are records of an instrument named gusle (гоусли) being played at the court of the 13th-century Serbian King Stefan Nemanjić, but it is not certain whether the term was used in its present-day meaning or it denoted some other kind of string instrument. Polish poets of the 17th century mentioned the gusle in their works. In a poem published in 1612, Kasper Miaskowski wrote that "the Serbian gusle and gaidas will overwhelm Shrove Tuesday" (Serbskie skrzypki i dudy ostatek zagluszą).[5] In the idyll named Śpiewacy, published in 1663, Józef Bartłomiej Zimorowic used the phrase "to sing to the Serbian gusle" (przy Serbskich gęślach śpiewać).[5][6] In some older Serbian books on literature it was stated that a Serbian guslar performed at the court of Władysław II Jagiełło in 1415.[5] The earliest known Serbian Guslar is referred to in 1551 by Hungarian historian Sebastian Tinody, saying, There are many gusle players here in Hungary, but none is better at the Serbian style than Dimitrije Karaman. In addition Sebastian describes the performance, explaining that the Guslar would hold the Gusle between his knees and goes into a highly emotional artistic performance with a sad and dedicated expression on his face.[7]

The gusle has played a significant role in the history of Serbian epic poetry because of its association with the centuries old patriotic oral legacy. Most of the epics are about the era of the Ottoman occupation and the struggle for the liberation from it. With the efforts of ethnographer Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, many of these epics have been collected and published in books in the first half of the 19th century. At the beginning and in the middle of the nineteenth century, the first systematic collections of Serbian folk songs, tales, riddles and proverbs were published. They had been collected by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić "fresh from the lips of the people". They were: A Small Simple-Folk Slavonic-Serbian Songbook, 1814; Serbian Folk Song-Book (Vols, I-IV, Lepzig edition, 1823-8133; Vols. I-IV, Vienna edition, 1841-1862); Serbian Folk Tales (1821, with 166 riddles; and 1853); Serbian Folk Proverbs and Other Common Expressions, 1834. Next was a book of "Women's Songs" from Herzegovina (1866), which was collected by Karadžić's collaborator and assistant Vuk Vrčević, and Vuk Karadžić prepared them for publication just before his death. Serbian folk poetry was given a marvelous reception, as it appeared in Europe when romanticism was in full bloom. This poetry, which appeared in Karadžić's anthological collections, met the "expectations" of the sophisticated European audience, becoming a living confirmation of Herder's and Grimm's ideas about the oral tradition. Jacob Grimm began to learn Serbian so that he could read the poems in the original. He wrote minute analyses of each new volume of Serbian folk songs. He ranked them as being equal to the Song of Songs, as did Goethe somewhat later. Thanks to Grimm, moreover to the initiatives of the well-educated and wise Slovene Jerner Kopitar (the censor for Slavic books, Karadžić's counselor and protector), Serbian folk literature found its place in the literature of the world.[8]


  1. ^ a b A history of European folk music By Jan Ling, p. 87-90
  2. ^ Studies presented to Professor Roman Jakobson by his students, p. 167
  3. ^ Songs of the frontier warriors By Robert Elsie, Janice Mathie-Heck, p. 371
  4. ^ Sherer, Stan; Senechal, Marjorie (1997). Long Life to Your Children!: A Portrait of High Albania. University of Massachusetts Press. p. 19. 
  5. ^ a b c Krešimir Georgijević (2003). Српскохрватска народна песма у пољској књижевности (in Serbian). Project Rastko.
  6. ^ Józef Bartłomiej Zimorowic (1857). "Śpiewacy" (in Polish). Kazimierz Józef Turowski, ed. Sielanki Józefa Bartłomieja i Syzmona Zimorowiczów. The Internet Archive. p.39
  7. ^ Else Mundal (2008). Oral Art Forms and Their Passage into Writing.
  8. ^ Nada Milošević-Đorđević, "The history of Serbian Culture", Porthill Publishers, Edgware, Middiesex, 1995.


  • Milošević-Đorđević, Nada, The History of Serbian Culture. Porthill Publishers, Edgware, Middiesex, 1995.
  • Kos, Koraljka, Das Volksinstrument “gusle” in der bildenden Kunst des 19. Jahrhundert. Zum Wandel eines ikonographischen Motivs, Glazba, ideje i društvo / Music, Ideas, and Society. Svečani zbornik za Ivana Supičića / Essays in Honour of Ivan Supičić, ur. S. Tuksar, HMD, Zagreb 1993, 113-124.
  • Kos, Koraljka, Representations of the Gusle in Nineteenth-Century Visual Arts, RidIM/RCMI Newsletter XX/2 (New York 1995) 13-18.
  • Milne Holton and Vasa D. Mihailovich. Serbian Poetry from the Beginnings to the Present. New Haven: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1988.
  • Primorac, Jakša; Ćaleta, Joško. "Professionals". Croatian Gusle Players at the Turn of the Millennium Original: Balkan Epic. Song, History, Modernity (2006) (in process of publishing)
  • Beatrice L. Stevenson, The Gusle Singer and His Songs. (with "Heroic Ballads of Serbia"), American Anthropologist 1915 Vol.17:58-68.

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