Silk Road Instruments

yatga
[YAHT gah] orig. Mongolia

The yatga is a plucked zither. It varies widely in size, tuning, and number of strings and bridges depending on the purpose of its use. Its body is a long wooden box with one end angled toward the ground. As with the kayagum, the player uses the right hand to pluck the strings with fingernails while the left hand applies pressure to the strings over the bridges.

Today the most common type of yatga has thirteen strings. However, a twelve-string instrument was historically used at royal court because the number of strings corresponded to the twelve levels of the palace hierarchy. The traditional Mongolian epic poem Janggar includes the tale of a young princess who played on the seven lower bridges of a yatga with 82 bridges and 800 strings. Long zithers similar to the yatga and the kayegum [GA ya goom] are found throughout East Asia and include the Japanese koto and Chinese cheng.