Stringed instrument, blown rather than plucked or strummed, with a single string and tuning noose attached both to a bow and a feather quill, with a frame made from a coconut shell
Long open endblown flute with five fingerholes
#Native instruments service center does not allow letters skin
Small stringed instrument, with plucked metal strings, elongated belly as soundboard and narrow neck ending in a pegbox, decorated with carvings of animals and covered with skin Set of cylindrical shawm-like instruments, with an air reservoir like a bagpipeīowl lyre made of lizardskin with strings tied to a piece of wood inserted into two holes on two armsīowed string instrument with a long neck, similar to a fiddle or sarangi and played vertically Use of goatskins in constructing the bag, similar to the common use of other goat-terms for bagpipes in other nations Straight trumpet without fingerholes, traditionally made from a trunk or thick branch of a tree, sometimes with a rim of beeswax around the blowing end, requires circular breathing Pear-shaped fretless stringed instrument, with five courses of two strings and a single eleventh string, a bent back and a bowl-shaped body, often with up to three soundholes, played with a pickīutton accordion with a box shape, played with both hands using buttons that produce two sets of notes per handįretted stringed instrument with a hollow body and a soundboardĭouble-reed pipe with wide reeds made from pieces of cane in a duckbill-type assembly, generally diatonic and with a single octave rangeĭidjeridu, yidaki, yiraki, magu, kanbi, ihambilbilg Short-necked three-stringed lute with sympathetic and drone strings, fretted and plucked with a plectrum, with a double-chambered body, the lower part of which is covered in skin, and with three main strings Others reflect regions or subcultures within a given nation, such as the Australian didgeridoo which is or has been called didjeridu, yidaki, yiraki, magu, kanbi and ihambilbilg in various Australian Aboriginal languages. These mostly come from alternative spellings within English or alternative methods of transliterating from a foreign language to English, such as the Chinese yangqin, also transliterated yang ch'in and yang qin. Alternative names and spellings are given. A number of countries have more than one instrument listed, each having been described as a national instrument, not usually by the same source neither the presence of multiple entries for one nation, nor for multiple nations for one instrument, on this list is reflective of active dispute in any instance. Images and recordings are supplied where available note that there are often variations within a national musical tradition, and thus the images and recordings may not be accurate in depicting the entire spectrum of the given nation's music, and that some images and recordings may be taken from a region outside the core of the national instrument's home when such distinctions have little relevance to the information present in the image and recordings. This number indicates the instrument's classification within the Hornbostel-Sachs system (H-S), which organizes instruments numerically based on the manner in which they produce sound.
Each instrument on this list has a Hornbostel-Sachs number immediately below it. This list compiles instruments that have been alleged to be a national instrument by any of a variety of sources, and an instrument's presence on the list does not indicate that its status as a national instrument is indisputable, only that its status has been credibly argued. Governments do not generally officially recognize national instruments some exceptions being the Paraguayan harp, the Japanese koto and the Trinidadian steelpan. Danish ethnologist Lisbet Torp has concluded that some national instrument traditions, such as the Finnish kantele, are invented, pointing to the "influence of intellectuals and nationalists in the nationwide promotion of selected musical instruments as a vehicle for nationalistic ideas". In some cases, national instruments remain in wide use within the nation (such as the Puerto Rican cuatro), but in others, their importance is primarily symbolic (such as the Welsh triple harp). This list contains musical instruments of symbolic or cultural importance within a nation, state, ethnicity, tribe or other group of people.