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View “The Secrets to Making a Ney”

Photography by Rollo Romig
Written by Rollo Romig

This gallery is a supplement to The Reed Artist

Gokhan Ozkok selects a reed from his storeroom. Depending on the size of the reed, the ney could be any of 22 different varieties. A skilled ney player can get three octaves out of a single instrument. However, most carry several different sizes to make it easier to achieve a wide range of notes.

Reeds grow crooked and must be straightened. Rifat Varol uses a heat gun to make the reed more pliable. Others use an open flame.

After heating the reed, some ney makers use a post like this to straighten it. In the old days they did this over their knees. There are differing opinions about who invented the straightening post. When I mentioned the dispute to the ney maker Hakan Alvan, he said, “You have to remember, musicians are children.”

In its raw form, the reed is blocked by nodes at each junction of the reed segments. Most ney makers open these nodes by jamming a long steel rod tipped with a rat-tail file through the shaft.

Then the node holes need to be refined. Ozkok’s solution is this “reed angio,” a tool of his own invention. His inspiration for its design came from seeing a grocer use a reacher-grabber tool to fetch items on high shelves.

Each ney maker has his own technique for figuring out where to drill the seven finger holes. Salih Bilgin uses these long, custom-made rulers, one for each ney size. Rifat Varol consults a dogeared chart and measures the steps with a compass. Each reed is unique, so such measurements can only serve as starting approximations. After that a ney maker must go by instinct and experience.

Whatever system they use to place the ney’s blow-holes, Sayin’s disciples are loyal to his “kaydirma” measurments. These, they say, get them closer to the tuning that Turkish classical music requires than any other system yet devised.

Gokhan Ozkok drills his tone holes with a flexible shaft machine.

Other ney makers use a modified dental drill.

Bilal Kabat slices into a buffalo horn with a band saw. More than half of each horn is hollow; baspares are carved from the solid section near the tip.

Kabat then carves the baspare on a lathe. A synthetic polymer called delrin is also increasingly popular for baspare—to the chagrin of traditionalists who insist that the ney should be made only from organic materials.

A nearly finished ney, bearing Gokhan Ozkok’s signature.

Rollo Romig is a native Detroiter and a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine. He has been a news reporter for the The Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh and an editorial staffer at The New Yorker.

© 2024 Rollo Romig. All rights reserved. Under exclusive license to Craftsmanship, LLC. Unauthorized copying or republication of any part of this article is prohibited by law.

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