The Irish Bouzouki is a stringed instrument in the mandolin family that the Irish adopted for traditional music from what was originally a Greek instrument. Since the 1960’s players such as Donal Lunny, Andy Irvine, and Johnny Moynihan have adopted and popularized the Irish Bouzouki so that it is now commonly seen at Irish traditional music concerts and at Irish music sessions (where groups of musicians gather for spontaneous play).  The instrument is roughly guitar sized, but with a smaller body and longer neck which give it a slightly larger scale length than a guitar would have. It has eight strings, in four courses of two each and has three popular tunings, GDAD, GDAE, and ADAD. I use the first of those as it is great for accompaniment.  As the instrument became popular in Ireland the Irish adapted it a bit and made it into a flat-backed instrument with a wider body to replace the rounded Greek style instrument. It became popular in groundbreaking bands like “Sweeney’s Men”, “Planxty”, "The Bothy Band" and “De Dannan”, and even the Irish punk band “The Pogues”.

This website covers three of the best known players of this instrument,  Donal Lunny, Andy Irvine, and Johnny Moynian. It is Johnny Moynihan who is usually credited with bringing the instrument to Irish traditional music. The other two are his contemporaries and sometimes bandmates.There is also a “video” page with an embedded video and a contact form.