Igil (Tuvan Horsehead Fiddle)
Two-stringed bowed fiddle of the Tuvans, its hollow wooden body covered with hide and its neck crowned with a carved horse's head. The igil accompanies khoomei throat singing and Tuvan epic song, evoking the gait and voice of a steppe horse; it is prized across Central Asia and appears in the collection of the Russian Museum of Ethnography. The two strings, traditionally of horsehair, are tuned a fifth apart and played with a bow, the instrument held upright on the knee; the sound is soft and nasal, and players imitate the walk, trot and gallop of the horse with the bow. In Tuva, 2009 was decl