Zagreb, (IKA) – A tamburitza performance of the song “Lord, When You Came to the Seashore (Krist na žalu) at the Vigil of Young People with Pope Benedict XVI is being eagerly awaited by Andrija Franić. After the song is played on June 4 at Ban Josip Jelačić Square in Zagreb, a tamburitza made by Franić will be presented to the Pope. Andrija Franić gladly shared the details of the building of the tamburitza and how the instrument should look with papa.hr. For the past four decades, Franić has made a career of building this traditional Slavonian instrument, starting when he was fifteen years old. “After being requested by the Organizing Committee for Welcoming the Holy Father to make a tamburitza for the Pope’s visit, I haven’t been able to sleep from excitement,” said Franić and added that many people decided to help him when they learned that he was building this valuable instrument.
“Several people donated materials for making the instrument and a company from Vinkovci made a wooden case for it out of walnut wood, which is black in color,” said Franić.
Describing the appearance of the instrument, Franić explained that he would not ornament the tamburitza or inscribe the instrument for this occasion. “From the visual aspect, the aim was to make the most natural appearance possible while technically the goal was to build a tamburitza with a sound that could compete with the best and most expensive stringed instruments,” said Franić. “The tamburitza will be a natural yellow color, symbolizing the Vatican, and decorated with a piece of leather on which it will be written that it was made in Županja,” he explained.
In order to produce an instrument that will last up to a hundred years, materials used have been aged for ten to twenty years. “It is a traditional manual technique based on the collected wisdom of old masters from the Slavonian region dating from the year 1840,” Franić told the website papa.hr.