1265 BELARUS - Blowing in horn

1265 Belarusian blowing in horn

Generally speaking, the traditional musical instruments emerged from very simple objects of life that were used to produce sounds and developed into rather complicated mechanisms. One should not forget that original music instruments were used not primarily for entertainment, but as signal instruments by gatherers, hunters and shepards. Probably that the first instruments used to make sounds were the wind instruments and the percussion ones.

One of the simplest possible, from the point of view of construction, as well as the use, has been the horn. Of course that the area known today as Belarus wasn't an exception, and the horn (named roh in belarusian) is one of the traditional Belarusian musical instruments. The horn doesn't have finger playing holes, and is made out of natural horns of cattle (bull, cow, ram), or of wood (birch, maple, spruce).

Regarding the horn made of cattle horn, the player inserts it into the right side of the mouth and can extract from one to three sounds. These three sounds comprise simple signal melodies played by shepards and hunters. The animal horns were used in Southern Belarus (Palesse and Mahilyow region), while in Northern Belarus much more complicated wooden horns were built.

About the stamps
The second stamp is part of the series Edible Mushrooms, about which I wrote here.

References
Belarusian Folk Musical Instruments and Folk Music - Virtual Guide to Belarus

Sender: Karina / lapse_of_memory (postcrossing)
Sent from Minsk (Minsk / Belarus), on 25.09.2014
Club of maestros of popular arts and crafts "Lakeside" with the Braslav Museum of Traditional Culture