Short Summary
Hi, we are Dima and Daria, and we own a small family business, called Babayevharps. We create musical instruments – jaw harps.
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Jaw harps, which we offer as a gratitude for your contribution. You can check the sound of harps here.
Dima started to work with metal in 2003, and he's in love with this craft. Now his instruments live in America, Turkey, Greece, Moldova, Norway, England, Israel, Russia and many other countries. All of the harps he makes are hundred percent handmade work. Dima makes everyting to make his instumetns best quality, he is constantly trying to improve the characteristics of instruments he makes and construct new models. As a proof - his harp has overcome 84 opponents in the Russian Jaw harp Festival, which was held in Moscow on September, and got the highest score. One of instruments made by Dima even was played at the Fougaro Jazz Festival which was in Greece! Daria helps Dima at work, communicates with customers, leads social media and comes up with new creative projects.
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Dima and Daria
Babayev Jaw harps World
Sometimes things are happening by their own way: we didn't expect that production of these instruments can lead to creation of a new small universe.
Jaw harps have rich history and great cultural value. In traditional society jaw harps were used in religious practices. Archaeologists find harps all over the world. In the Middle Ages and even later these instruments have been spread throughout Russia, India and most of Europe.
We think that it is really great that there is a place for magic in our age of computers, offices and machines. With the sound of a jaw harps music, which was played thousands years ago, rushes through the centuries into the modern world. And it is so easy to play this music by yourself, without practicing or training! Jaw harp is a simple construction instrument. While playing, person resonates with the instrument and becoming a part of it. This creates special music reality, where there is no place for everyday worries. This way the everyday world becomes full of mysteries and magic, and everyone decides by himself how to interpret this magic.
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One of our jaw harps in a process of creating
Our participation in jaw harps worldwide culture
- Our main project now is a reconstruction of Russian jaw harps dated XIV - XV centuries. The results of this work are planned to present on the 9th International Congress of jaw harp in Moscow which will be held in the second half of 2017. All results will be free access after publishing. More information about this project you can ask here, but now it has almost a "secret" mark.
- Also we support Russian players competitions and make harps for the winners - we sponsored competitions in 2015 and 2016 years and we are plnning and further encourage jaw harps players!
Our cooperation with artists and designers
We cooperate with young artists and designers, whose view of the world is close to ours. Together we come up with this magical world, and no one knows where this way is going to take us. We are very happy that we can create additional opportunities for young artists, and that our small production gains this friendly family. Our wonderful designers help us develop wonderful stickers with magical creatures, fluffy jaw harps toys and prepare new (secret) projects with us :)
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One of stickers with a creature playing a jaw harp made by russian artist Ivan Khanzhin
What we are planning to do
- To introduce two new beautiful types of polished harps (with different sound characteristics)
- To make cheaper the production of some current models
- Start to making harps of timascus
- To concentrate on better sound's and visual quality of the harps
- To make more that 10 harps in a month! (The main part of work still will stay handmade, we just want to allow machines to help us)
- To faster finish the reconstruction of Russian jaw harps dated XIV-XV centuries project
What Do We Need
Now is the crucial moment in the life of our little studio: growing number of orders requires a new workplace and more productive equipment. All of the collected money will be spent on equipment which is required for work with metal - we need a milling machines, belt grinder, and all sorts of grinding machines, and a good anvil which can help us to perform wide range of works, forge-fire (yes, now we work without it), and muffle furnace.
Other ways you can help
We understand that there are plenty of organizations and projects who need monetary support. If you can not give us financial aid, but you want to help our little project, please spread the information about it. We and all of the little inhabitants of our world will be very grateful to you. Also, if your grandpa was a blacksmith or jeweller and you found an old anvil under your leads and you want to barter it on our jaw harp - write us. Maybe you just found the thing we are looking for a long time!
We want to introduce you two our favorite patterned harpsm which body frame is almost ready: is jaw harp is called "Concave form of life". And the next harp is "Samorost". Them was made long time ago and wait in the wings. Bouth harps are for perk Super-patterned jaw harp (1000 USD). We keep them unfinished so you we make some corrections in the patterns if you want (we can engrave a name or some phrase, or correct the pattern). Also we want to tune it specially for you, so you can choose the key you want.
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And one munnharpe called "Fiord" (300 USD). It's body is ready and just wait someone who will say in what tune he wants this harp. We want to accent that taking one of our harps you help our workshop to move to a new level and produce new models of harps. All harps offered here are 100% handmade and will stay handmade in future - we jast want to allow machines to help us.
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More information about Babayevharps project you can find in social media with tag #babayevharps
