Dudy/Mladina

Jan Voves, Mladina (signed by Jon Voves)
9 x 6 inches, drawing stick in sketchbook, 2018

The town of Fort Myers Beach has a Plzeň theme this weekend. I figured the Czech city of Plzeň is a Sister City of Fort Myers Beach but neither Fort Myers nor Fort Myers Beach have sister cities. Yesterday I went to the FMB public library where a number of cultural events were happening, to watch a performance by the folk group Mladina. A delightful little concert it was. Plzeň, of course, is known the world around as the namesake for the word pilsner, synonymous for beer. I had my sketchbook with and made some sketches one of which is this one of dudy player Jan Voves. A dudy is a bagpipe. The Dutch word for bagpipe is 'doedelzak' and I wondered if the word is related to the Czech dudy. According to Wiktionary the word is onomatopoeic (meaning that the word derives from the sound associated with it) but upon further investigation the words doedelzak and dudy are indeed related and come from the Turkish düdük which means 'pipe.' The Polish word is also dudy and in German it's dudelsack, all these term then translate to the English bagpipe (zak/sack = bag.) The word doodle also comes the German dudel (dudeldopp = simpleton.) You can't really tell from the drawing (the doodle) but the end of the pipe of the dudy has a carving of a goat's head. Jan Voves explained that the goat's sound is compared to the dudy. The bleat of a goat sounds like maa or baa, but not dudy. (The Czech word for goat is 'koza.')