Dombra. The dombra is the most widespread of Kazakh folk instruments. The dombra could be found in every yurt; it was one of the most necessary and important parts of Kazakh life. The history of the origin of this instrument dates back centuries. When excavating the ancient city of Khorezm, archaeologists found terracotta statuettes of musicians playing the two-stringed plucked instruments. Researchers determined that Khorezm two-stringed instruments existed about two thousand years ago, they were one of the musical instruments of the Sak nomadic tribes. These instruments resemble the Kazakh dombra and they are the dombra’s prototypes. So, with the help of archaeology the ancient origin of dombra was established. There are two kinds of dombras - western and eastern. Different shapes of dombras were determined by the peculiarities of two performing traditions. For the performing of the rapid, virtuoso tokpe-kiuis it is necessary that the left hand easily move and slip at the neck. Therefore the western dombra had a thin and elongated neck. These technical methods were inapplicable when performing at the eastern dombras with wide and shortened neck. The sizes of instruments and shapes of bodies affected the strength of sound: the more the size of dombra the louder its sound. The technique of the right hand affected the nature of sound too: in tokpe-kiuis the sound was derived from both strings by the strong hand waves, but in shertpe the sepate fingers touched the string softly by plucking. Thus between the structure if the dombras and kiuis, which are performed on them, existed close connection. Dombra could be not only two-stringed. Three-stringed dombras were met in different regions of Kazakhstan in the past, at present times they are kept only in Semipalatinsk region. See “Legends” for the “Legend of the Bombra”