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Dmitry Babayev
Dmitry Babaev is a jaw harp maker from Barnaul who works in Saint Petersburg. At the 2016 Moscow competition for makers of bow-shaped jaw harps, one of his instruments received the highest overall score among all 82 entries—8.895 points. Babaev also took third place in the upper-register category.
Babaev first encountered the jaw harp in 2002, when he bought a komus made by Vladimir Potkin in Altai. He was especially impressed by the low voice of a large komus by Nogon Shumarov. With no access to practical information on instrument making, Babaev decided in 2003 to make a jaw harp of his own. He completed his first instrument in early 2004: its frame was shaped from sheet steel, and its reed was made from a steel ruler.
In the spring of 2004, Babaev learned about the forging of Yakut khomuses and began experimenting with massive forged frames. From 2004 to 2006, he worked on instruments together with Alexander Antonenko, but then suspended his work after enrolling at a music college. After acquiring a khomus by Innokenty Gotovtsev in 2010, Babaev returned to a design with a sheet-steel frame while continuing his experiments with bent and forged frames. This work absorbed him to such an extent that he left the college and moved to Saint Petersburg to study blacksmithing.
The archived catalogue entries show the broad range of Babaev’s early work—from large mid-to-low-register komuses to the bass “Night Cicada” and a high-pitched melodic model. In his later instruments, the maker reduced the gaps and achieved more clearly defined harmonic overtones. Jaw harps inspired by archaeological finds became a separate direction in his work: the frame of the current “Kulya” model is designed in the style of thirteenth-century instruments found in Veliky Novgorod.
Warning! Overwhelming majority of jaw harps presented are single pieces or made by hand, in very small quantities, instruments. There is no jaw harp factories exists; every one is unique in details, in different degree.
