The santour is a stringed, percussion, flat musical instrument played with baguettes, two thin wooden mallets wrapped at the ends with leather, felt or cloth. It is an ancient musical instrument, probably Persian, that was widely spread in Greece by Asia Minor refugees after the Catastrophe of 1922.
The santour, a melodic and polyphonic instrument, with a strong and characteristic timbre, is used either as a soloist or as an accompaniment instrument: with the violin, clarinet, lute and tambouras it forms the company of mainland Greece, while with the violin and lute they form the island zygia.