The mey is a double-reed aerophone used in Turkish folk music. The mey, duduk, and balaban are almost identical, except for historical and geographical differences.

Description

A mey consists of three parts: ana gövde (main part), kamış (reed), and kıskaç (clip).

History

There are many instruments similar to the mey in Eurasia. These include the European aulos and douçaine , the Azerbaijani/Iranian balaban, the Uyghur balaman, the Dagestani yasti balaban, the Georgian duduki, the Armenian duduk, the Japanese hichiriki, the Korean piri, the Chinese guanzi and houguan, the Kyrgyz kamis sirnay, and the Cambodian pey au. Musicologists like Farmer (1936: 316) and Picken (1975: 480) have suggested that the ancient wind instruments mait, monaulos, and auloi present major resemblances with the mey and the other similar instruments. In Hellenistic Egypt, there was an instrument called mait or monaulos which was similar to the mey and there was another one in Anatolia which was called auloi and its picture was found on a vase.