~ Aikia’s Mandolin ~

May 27 – 31, 2005

Aikia Kha's one-of-a-kind mandolin, the one with which she so successfully demonstrates her musical talents for modern audiences, was fashioned many, many years ago by Frabrizio Sognatore, an artisan-craftsman in Venice.

Using only the finest and rarest materials, Fabrizio Sognatore built the mandolin to the exacting specifications of Herr Ricard Krüli...

…the Concertmaster to the Prince-Archbishop of Plashmar.

Herr Krüli was greatly pleased with the mandolin, indeed he used it again and again to entertain the Prince-Archbishop and his court, and Herr Krüli was always ready to raise the baton...

...and conduct his players in happy mandolin diversion.




Unfortunately, after the disasters of the Poultry Wars and the pillage of the Prince-Archbishop's palace, the mandolin fell into the hands of the notorious pirate Lucien "Daddy" Spango.

...and Daddy Spango sold the the mandolin to a Rajputani Maharaja, whose daughter The Princess Chilooknapati, played cool breezy ragas in the warm Rajputani evenings.



The mandolin eventually traveled to the distant Mingai-Ya Provinces and became the favorite instrument of Madame LaikiaYa Khan-Ya, the 13th wife of the Great Mingai-Ya Khan. LaikiaYa enjoyed playing the mandolin in the imperial jade costume of the Pink Dragon while dreaming of the future.





When the mighty Mingai-Ya Empire fell, the mandolin was rescued in a daring naval engagement off the Maldive Islands by Ensign Lord Seems.

who offered it to Lady Phrasia Shouting as proof of his affection.

Lady Phrasia's mother, the Countess of Shouting, disapproved of a match between the young lovers however, and Lady Phrasia was left holding a mandolin she could not play.

The Countess, to pay her gambling debts, sold the unwanted instrument to Dewar Strop, Esq., a businessman of international reputation.

Dewar Strop took the mandolin to New Orleans as part of an antique commodities and artifacts sale, and it wound up in the able hands of freed slave Jupiter McMoanson who played soulful blues with it for years. "Ol' Jupe" taught the blues to Ray Tipton Slim, the great Memphis Blues Man, much admired by Aikia Kha and her trio of talented musicians recently hitting the heights of popularity for their rejuvenation of experimental Thé Dansant.

The mandolin was lost after the death of Ol' Jupe. Ray Tipton recalls he played a couple tunes on it at Jupe's wake, but the mandolin went missing the next morning.
Nor is there is indication of how the mandolin returned to The Old World, or how it was acquired by Curly Bezhukov, the bargeman from Tsarskoselo, who played it lovingly on the rivers of Russia, effortlessly and mysteriously coming up with melodies no one had heard for several hundred years.

Curly told vacationing Juliard School of Music student Harry Manning-Belmont, it was “a fine set of strings” when he traded it for Harry's iPod and telecamera in the Yalta gyro cafe.

Harry played the mandolin for awhile cruising the Greek Islands...

…but, realizing he was no musician himself, gave it to his friend, teen-idol Frankie Wales, who plays with 'GreenPants', the break-out garageband from Los Banos, California.

Frankie loved the mandolin, but his girl friend the ingenue-actress Tina Code did not, and in a pique of redecoration she put Fabrizio Sognatore's fabulous mandolin for sale up on eBay.

That's where Aikia Kha saw it of course, and when she saw it she immediatly knew she had to have it. She out bid several hundred others for the venerable instrument, the wonderful mandolin that now gives her so many moments of reverie.

Aikia believes the mandolin to be an extention of her very soul, feels she is channeling every pluck and strum ever played on its strings, indeed feels she is channeling the very Madame LaikiaYa Khan-Ya herself.

Here is Aikia playing her mandolin in concert at Whitney Warren Hall in Cambridge Massachusetts, interpreting a Ricasoli peasant etude with Georgette d’Issac-Spango, (a direct descendent of the notorious pirate), and Anthony Eisly, Georgette’s recently announced fiance’

~~~