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Veena players sit cross-legged on the floor, with the instrument resting diagonally across their laps
Word of the week: This ornate, curvaceous, south Indian classical instrument, the saraswati veena, is a special bowl lute with a rich, resonant tone, has 24 copper frets with four playing strings and three drone strings, and is used for Carnatic music
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Korean musicians in 1971 playing, from left to right, the gayageum, haegeum, yanggeum, and komungo/
Word of the week: A form or hammered dulcimer, this traditional Korean instrument, with a flat and trapezoidal shape, has seven sets of four metal strings hit by thin bamboo stick
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Kaufmann’s 19th-century Trumpet Player automaton inspected in 1950
Word of the week: It sounds like a bulbous, multi-layered peeling vegetable, but this obscure mechanical musical instrument invented in 1812 in Dresden consisted of 24 trumpets and two kettle drums and, designed to mimic the sound of a marching band, might also make your eyes water
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Archive early 20th-century photographs of players of, clockwise from top left, the Lithuanian kanklės, followed by equivalents showing Latvian, Estonian, and Finnish folk musicians, all part of the Baltic psaltery family
Word of the week: A singular noun despite the last letter, this is a lap zither instrument of Lithuania, part of the Baltic box zither family known as the Baltic psaltery, along with the Latvian kokles, Estonian kannel, Finnish kantele, and Russian gusli, and with a name thought to originally mean ‘singing tree’.
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Turkish musician Görkem Şen playing his invention, the Yaybahar
Word of the week: Resonant, vivid, and otherworldly in sound, this extraordinary musical instrument was invented by the Turkish musician Görkem Şen who describes it as a “real-time acoustic string synthesizer”
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The erxian takes many years to master
Word of the week: One of China’s most important traditional bowed instruments with an unmistakable sound, dating back at least 2,000 years, with a hardwood neck and a rounded bamboo soundbox and two strings, it looks simple, but takes years to master
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The firikyiwa can be played on one hand
Word of the week: Pronounced free-chee-wah, and best known in Ghana and other parts of West Africa, this is a two-piece single-handed pod bell percussion instrument, with a round hollow iron shell worn on the index finger struck by the ring on the thumb
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Hyōshigi will regularly feature in Japanese kabuki theatre to call attention to the audience
Word of the week: Hyōshigi (拍子木) describes a simple, clapping percussion instrument with a sound evocative of Kabuki theatre and other Japanese traditions – two pieces of hardwood or bamboo connected by a thin ornamental rope – they bang together, sometimes with increasing speed.
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Don’t look back in anger, but inanga
Word of the week: A trough-style traditional zither played in Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the soundboard with concave sides and six to eight string pitches on the pentatonic scale, its evocative plucked sound is often accompanied by poetic, sometimes whispered song narratives
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Milin Tulankar playing Jal Tarang
Word of the week: Also known as jal tarang (Hindi: जलतरंग) meaning waves of water this is a traditional, Indian subcontinent percussion instrument dating back to the 4th–6th centuries CE, comprising up to 22 porcelain or glass bowls filled with water and struck with sticks
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The k'lông pút is not played by touch, but handclaps forcing air through each tube
Word of the week: Also simplified to klong put, this Vietnamese traditional xylophone, played by Bahnar people, comes with a difference – instead of its bamboo tubes being struck, they are not touched at all – resonant pitches are produced by hand-clapping
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Sets of launeddas from Sardinia
Word of the week: A traditional polyphonic Italian reed instrument from Sardinia, also known as the triple pipe or clarinet, comprising three canes that requires circular breathing to produce drone and tuneful melodies
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Romanian nai virtuoso Gheorghe Zamfir
Word of the week: This Romanian 17th-century panpipe is a mainstay of traditional folk and classical music, wide in range and resonant, it is made up of at least 20 pipes made of bamboo or reed in the diatonic scale of C or G, and emits a clean, distinctive sound
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The płock, płocka or fidel płocka
Word of the week: Also called płock, płocka or fidel płocka, a box-shaped six-string traditional Polish folk violin, without fingerboard or tailpiece, played vertically resting on the knee, and pairs of strings doubling pitch to bring a rich, resonant sound
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A variety of ronroco models
Word of the week: An Andean 10-string (5 doubles) form of mandolin, baritone or bass charango, this beautiful instrument was invented in the 1980s by Gonzalo Hermosa González, of the group Los Kjarkas from Cochabamba, Bolivia and has been used in many acclaimed film scores
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The sistrum is an international percussion instrument but its origins date back to Ancient Egypt and the goddess Hathor
Word of the week: A percussion instrument dating back to Ancient Egypt with different varieties, mostly of U-shaped brass or bronze frame, with crossbars and moving metal hoops that when shaken make a soft clank or loud jangling
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A terpidion’s interior workings with rolling cylinder and leather-covered hammers create sound via friction
Word of the week: The terpodion, also known as uranion, is an extremely rare 19th-century keyboard instrument that, when keys are pressed, creates sound via friction against a rotating coated wooden cylinder
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The xaque-xaque has many alternative names …
Word of the week: Sometimes also xique-xique, a wonderfully evocative, onomatopoeic term for any kind of Brazilian rattle instrument, but when used in English referring more specifically to the maracas rattle
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Angklung set
Word of the week: This evocative word describes a rattling but tuneful musical instrument of the Sudanese people of Indonesia, made of bamboo tubes in a wooden frame, tuned to octaves like handbells, and shaken by hand to create a repeating, trembling notes
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The Tuvan byzaanchy
Word of the week: A distinctive sounding four-stringed vertical spike fiddle used in the traditional music of Tuva, similar to the Chinese sihu, but with a wooden soundbox, sometimes cylindrical or cubical, often with a with a carved head
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