The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel, the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African and Asian instruments, diatonic in many western children's instruments, or chromatic for orchestral use.
Gourds include the fruits of some flowering plant species in the family Cucurbitaceae, particularly Cucurbita and Lagenaria. The term refers to a number of species and subspecies, many with hard shells, and some without. One of the earliest domesticated types of plants, subspecies of the bottle gourd, Lagenaria siceraria, have been discovered in archaeological sites dating from as early as 13,000 BCE. Gourds have had numerous uses throughout history, including as tools, musical instruments, objects of art, film, and food.
The balafon is a gourd-resonated xylophone, a type of struck idiophone. It is closely associated with the neighbouring Mandé, Senoufo and Gur peoples of West Africa, particularly the Guinean branch of the Mandinka ethnic group, but is now found across West Africa from Guinea to Mali. Its common name, balafon, is likely a European coinage combining its Mandinka name ߓߟߊ bala with the word ߝߐ߲ fôn 'to speak' or the Greek root phono.
The kamancheh is an Iranian bowed string instrument used in Persian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Kurdish, Georgian, Turkmen, and Uzbek music with slight variations in the structure of the instrument. The kamancheh is related to the rebab which is the historical ancestor of the kamancheh and the bowed Byzantine lyra. The strings are played with a variable-tension bow.
Calabash, also known as bottle gourd, white-flowered gourd, long melon, birdhouse gourd, New Guinea bean, Tasmania bean, and opo squash, is a vine grown for its fruit. It can be either harvested young to be consumed as a vegetable, or harvested mature to be dried and used as a utensil, container, or a musical instrument. When it is fresh, the fruit has a light green smooth skin and white flesh.
The music of Central Asia is as vast and unique as the many cultures and peoples who inhabit the region. Principal instrument types are two- or three-stringed lutes, the necks either fretted or fretless; fiddles made of horsehair; flutes, mostly sige at both ends and either end-blown or side-blown; and jew harps, mostly metal. Percussion instruments include frame drums, tambourines, and kettledrums. Instrumental polyphony is achieved primarily by lutes and fiddles.
Ektara is a one-stringed musical instrument used in the traditional music of South Asia, and used in modern-day music of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan.
The goje is one of the many names for a variety of one or one-stringed fiddles from West Africa, almost exclusively played by ethnic groups inhabiting the Sahel and Sudan sparsely vegetated grassland belts leading to the Sahara. Snakeskin or lizard skin covers a gourd bowl, and a horsehair string is suspended on bridge. The goje is played with a bowstring.
A kontigi or kuntigi is a one- or three-stringed African lute. The one string version is used among the Songhai and Djerma. The 3-string version teharden is used among the Tamashek.
The bladder fiddle was a folk instrument used throughout Europe and in the Americas. The instrument was originally a simple large stringed fiddle made with a long stick, one or more thick gut strings, and a pig's-bladder resonator. It was bowed with either a notched stick or a horsehair bow.
The gourd mouth organ is a free reed mouth organ played across East and Southeast Asia. It consists of a gourd wind chest with several bamboo or bronze pipes inserted on top of it, the numbers of pipes differing from region to region.
The Uhadi, a musical bow, is a traditional Southern African Xhosa musical instrument. It is a large unembraced musical bow which is attached to a resonator and played by percussion. The length of the string bow ranges from 115 to 130 centimeters. Similar musical bows in Southern Africa include the ‘’thomo’’ in Sotho music and the ‘’ugubhu’’ in Zulu music.
The ploy is a Cambodian wind instrument. It is constructed of a gourd body with 5 to 7 bamboo tubes protruding from the body, and a bamboo pipe set at a right angle to the gourd. Musicians blow air in through the bamboo tube, which fills the gourd "wind chest" and exits through the other bamboo tubes. Each of the bamboo sound-tubes has a metal rod inside, that vibrate in the air passing through the tube.
The kinnari vina is a historical veena, a tube zither with gourds attached to act as resonators and frets. It was played in India into the late 19th century and was documented by two European artists. The instrument dates back into medieval times and possibly as far back as 500 C.E. It is closely related to the Alapini Vina and Eka-tantri Vina, the instruments having coexisted in medieval times.
Frame zither is a class of musical instrument within the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system for a type of simple chordophone, in which the body of the instrument is made from a frame.
The simbing is an malian harp-lute, used by the Mandinka people of Mali, and Mandinka and Jola peoples of Senegal and Gambia. The instruments consist of a calabash resonator, a stick for a neck, a metal jingle attached to the neck, and a bridge that holds the string over the skin soundboard in a vertical line. For comparison lutes usually have the strings held in a horizontal line above the soundboard. The instruments have five to nine strings. The instrument from the 1790s was reported as having seven strings by Mungo Park.
The garaya is a round-bodied, two-string spike lute from Niger and Northern Nigeria
