Bamboo musical instruments
Bamboo's natural hollow form makes it an obvious choice for many musical instruments.
Overview[]
Bamboo has been used to create a variety of instruments including flutes, mouth organs, saxophones, trumpets, drums, xylophones.
Flutes[]
There are numerous types of bamboo flutes made all over the world, such as the dizi, xiao, shakuhachi, palendag and jinghu. In the Indian subcontinent, it is a very popular and highly respected musical instrument, available even to the poorest and the choice of many highly venerated maestros of classical music. It is known and revered above all as the divine flute forever associated with Lord Krishna, who is always portrayed holding a bansuri in sculptures and paintings. Four of the instruments used in Polynesia for traditional hula are made of bamboo: nose flute, rattle, stamping pipes and the jaw harp. Bamboo may be used in the construction of the Australian didgeridoo instead of the more traditional eucalyptus wood.
Other bamboo instruments[]
In Indonesia and the Philippines, bamboo has been used for making various kinds of musical instruments, including the kolintang, angklung and . Bamboo is also used to make slit drums. Traditional Philippine banda kawayan (bamboo bands) use a variety of bamboo musical instruments, including the marimba, angklung, panpipes and bumbong, as well as bamboo versions of western instruments, such as clarinets, saxophones, and tubas.[2] The Las Piñas Bamboo Organ in the Philippines has pipes made of bamboo culms. The modern amplified string instrument, the Chapman stick, is also constructed using bamboo. The khene (also spelled khaen, kaen and khen; Lao: ແຄນ, Thai: แคน) is a mouth organ of Lao origin whose pipes, which are usually made of bamboo, are connected with a small, hollowed-out hardwood reservoir into which air is blown, creating a sound similar to that of the cello. In the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, the valiha, a long tube zither made of a single bamboo stalk, is considered the national instrument.
Bamboo has also recently been used for the manufacture of guitars and ukuleles. Bamboo Ukuleles are constructed of solid cross laminated bamboo strips not plywood. The bamboo solid wood strips are similar to bamboo manufactured flooring.
Gallery[]
Top and bottom-side views of a shakuhachi, end-blown bamboo flutes from Japan
Bamboo tube zither, Sumatra
Bamboo tube-zither drum
Bamboo tube-zither drum
Bamboo gong or slit drum, Agung a tamlang, Philippines
Indonesian slit drum
Sasando tube zither
Bamboo half-tube zithers
Double-reed clarinet, North Africa
double reed clarinet, Libya
Bamboo trumpet, Sulawesi, Indonesia
Siku, Pan pipes, Bolivia or Peru, Andes Mountains
Pan pipes, New Ireland Province, Queensland, Australia
bamboo Jew's Harp
Ainu Jew's Harpo
Bali Indonesia Xylophone-player, photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas
Bala, African xylophone
Bamboo marimba, one of the instruments created by Harry Partch
bamboo flutes
Bansuri, Indian Subcontinent
Sáo, Vietnamese flute
Angklung, Indonesia
Bamboo saxophone, Argentina
Khene, mouth organ, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos
Sheng mouth organ, China
Lusheng mouth organ
Ploong, a musical instrument of the Mru people, Bangladesh
Jinghu, Chinese bowed string instrument
Musician Agustinus Sasundu of Sangihe, with a bamboo wind instrument
References[]
- ^ Mercurio, Philip Dominguez (2006). "Traditional Music of the Southern Philippines". PnoyAndTheCity: A center for Kulintang – A home for Pasikings. Retrieved June 12, 2006.
- ^ "Origins and development of bamboo music". bbc.co.uk. 2011. Retrieved March 27, 2011.
- Bamboo musical instruments