The Persian kemenche is a spiked fiddle related to the modern day
violin.
It has four strings, and a similar rage to that of the violin.
The main difference is that instead of holding under your chin like the violin, the kemenche balances on a spike on the floor (or sometimes on one’s lap) depending on the style. Instead of moving the bow to change strings like with the violin, the kemenche rotates on the spike and the bow stays at the same angel.
Raquy discovered the kemenche when she was playing the zarb as accompaniment to the music of Amir Vahab, a Persian musician living in New York. He had a kemenche that he wasn’t using, so instead of paying Raquy for the gig, he gave her the kemenche.
Raquy is a self-taught kemenche player and does not play it in an authentic way. She does play a few Persian tunes, but for the most part she uses the kemenche for her own compositions and to play music from all over the Middle-East.
The kemenche that she currently plays does not come from
Iran. She found a man in Australia named Peter
Biffin, who has designed an incredible version of
the Persian kemenche that he calls “Kemenche
Tarhu”. So far he has custom designed two of those
for Raquy and those are the only ones that she plays in concerts these
days.
For more info about Peter Biffen and the instruments he makes, visit www.spikefiddle.com
Note: For those of you who have seen Raquy and the Cavemen,
putting the kemenche on a stand and playing standing up is not the
traditional way to play it. See the picture on this page as an example of a more
traditional way of holding it.