The Depository · Browse · Musical Instruments
110 techniques from 68 countries; by risk level: 19 critically endangered, 29 endangered, 41 vulnerable, 20 stable. Each record opens with a public summary; the full research record is free to view once registered.
The making of the rabab, a short-necked, waisted lute carved from a single block of mulberry wood and considered central to Afghan musical identity, in the workshops around Kharabat Street and Shor-Bazaar in Kabul, the quarter where…
The Albanian lahuta making tradition — the production of the specific single-string bowed instrument used by the Albanian Gheg epic poets (lahutarë) to accompany the oral recitation of the Albanian epic cycle (the kângë kreshnikësh — songs…
The shaping of the duduk, Armenia's double-reed woodwind instrument, from apricot wood aged and dried for twenty to thirty years to achieve the density and stability its characteristic warm, melancholic tone requires — a tradition in which…
The making of the didgeridoo (yidaki in Yolŋu language) — the long, hollow wind instrument originating in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, and among the oldest wind instruments in the world, with origins estimated at 1,000 to 1,500 years…
The Viennese clock making tradition — the production of the distinctive Austrian precision clocks (Regulatoren and Stutzuhren) developed during the Josephine period (Joseph II, 1780–1790) and reaching their height during the Biedermeier…
The Liège gunsmithing tradition and its associated Banc d'Épreuve (proof house) — the most historically significant arms-making center in continental Europe since the 16th century, whose proof house (established 1672, the oldest active…
The hand-carving of solid-wood Garifuna drums — hollowed without joins or glue from single hardwood logs, traditionally started by burning coals directly into the trunk, then chiseled, planed, and fitted with a deer-, peccary-, or…
The construction of the charango, a small ten-string Andean lute historically built with a dried armadillo-shell resonator back and now predominantly hand-carved or laminated from wood, a material shift driven by international…
A violin-making tradition originating in the Jesuit missions of Chiquitos, where Swiss missionary Martín Schmid founded the region's first music school at San Javier in 1730, training Chiquitano communities to build and play European…
The making of the berimbau — a single-stringed musical bow consisting of a curved wood bow (verga or arco), a steel string (arame), and a resonating chamber made from a dried, hollowed gourd (cabaça) — the leading instrument of capoeira,…
The making of caixas de Marabaixo — the traditional drums central to Marabaixo, the Afro-Brazilian musical, dance, and religious tradition of Mazagão Velho and the wider quilombola community of Amapá state, Brazil's northernmost state on…
The hollowing of sacred hardwood trunks and fitting of animal-hide heads to construct the large ceremonial drums central to Burundi's royal drumming tradition, ingoma, whose associated ritual dance was inscribed by UNESCO on the…
The Jarai people of Ratanakiri Province maintain a bronze gong casting and tuning tradition closely related to the Vietnamese Central Highlands gong traditions (shared cultural heritage across the Cambodia-Vietnam border).
Two defining Cambodian instruments: the chapei dong veng (two-stringed long-neck lute for philosophical poetry performance) and roneat ek (21-key bamboo xylophone).
The single-log carving of monumental, animal-form slit gongs by the Banda people, the largest single ethnic group in the Central African Republic, historically owned by chiefs across a shared cultural zone spanning north-central Congo and…
The construction of the kundi (or kende), a bow harp of the Zande people of the Central African Republic, and the closely related ngombi arched harp of the wider region, alongside the Ngbaka people's distinctive mbela musical bow.
The Miao wooden drum (木鼓 mù gǔ) is a hollowed-log ceremonial drum central to the Miao Drum Festival (苗族鼓藏节 Miáozú Gǔ Cáng Jié) — held once every 13 years and inscribed on China's National ICH List.
The Uyghur dutar is a long-necked, two-string plucked lute central to the Uyghur musical tradition of Xinjiang — and its making is a distinct craft tradition combining gourd or mulberry wood bowl carving, neck shaping and fretting, and…
PARTIAL RECORD BY DESIGN. The construction of the batá — a family of three double-headed, hourglass-shaped hand drums (iyá, itótele, and okónkolo) carved from a single piece of wood and headed with animal skin — central to Cuban Santería…
The staved-barrel construction of the tumbadora, or conga drum — a tall, narrow, single-headed drum central to Cuban rumba, conga (carnival street music), and, from the mid-20th century onward, salsa and Latin jazz globally.
The making of the congos — double-headed drums played with the hands — central to the ceremonial practice of the Cofradía del Espíritu Santo de los Congos de Villa Mella, an Afro-Dominican religious brotherhood founded by African and…
The construction of the semsemiah, a harp-like plucked-string lyre with a triangular wooden-pole frame, crafted and played by musicians themselves in the Egyptian cities of the Suez Canal region — Port Said, Suez, and Ismailia — and along…
The lali (wooden slit drum) is the primary communication instrument of traditional Fijian society — struck with padded mallets to transmit messages across village and valley.
The carving of the ngombi, a sacred arched harp central to Bwiti religious practice among Gabon's Fang, Mitsogo, and related ethnic groups, carved from a single hollowed piece of lightweight wood -- traditionally cottonwood -- and covered…
The hand-carving of Georgia's two closely related traditional long-necked lutes — the three-stringed, fretted panduri and its larger, fretless descendant the chonguri — shaped from carefully selected and thoroughly dried mulberry, walnut,…
The making of the concert zither (Konzertzither) — the Alpine plucked string instrument with 4–5 melody strings over a fretted fingerboard and 29–37 open accompaniment strings across the soundboard, whose specific acoustic character is…
The precision watch movement making tradition of Glashütte — the small Saxon town that became Germany's watchmaking center from 1845 when Ferdinand Adolph Lange established his workshop there, and where the Glashütter quality standard…
The organ building tradition of North Germany in the lineage of Arp Schnitger (1648–1719) — the most celebrated organ builder in European history, whose instruments defined the North German Baroque organ sound that J.S.
A complement to the Bavarian Zither making record (CRAFT-1194), documenting the tradition of string making for the Bavarian zither and related Alpine string instruments — specifically the production of gut strings (Darmsaiten) from sheep…
The hand-building of violins, other bowed and plucked string instruments, and brass and woodwind instruments in the Vogtland region of Saxony, centered on Markneukirchen, Klingenthal, and Schönbach — founded in the 1650s when twelve violin…
The hand-building of Guatemala's national instrument, a genuinely Afro-Indigenous syncretic tradition in which enslaved Africans introduced the sub-Saharan xylophone-and-gourd-resonator concept to Central America from the 16th century…
The making of the paired garaón hand drums — primero (tenor) and segunda (bass) — central to Punta and Paranda music of Guatemala's Garifuna community, concentrated in the Caribbean coastal town of Livingston.
The single-piece carving and goatskin-heading of the djembe, a goblet-shaped hand drum central to Malinke and wider Mandinka culture, traditionally hollowed from a single section of Lenge tree trunk, prized for centuries among the Malinke…
The construction technique and living guardianship tradition surrounding the balafon, a gourd-resonated wooden xylophone of the Mandé people, centered on the Sosso Bala — a specific, individually named instrument preserved in the village…
The making of the paired (sometimes triple) Garifuna hand drums — primera and segunda, occasionally joined by a tercera — hollowed from a single solid trunk of mahogany or mayflower hardwood, headed with deer, sheep, or pig skin, and…
The Hungarian tárogató instrument making tradition — the making of the distinctive Hungarian single-reed woodwind instrument whose sorrowful, penetrating tone became the musical symbol of Hungarian national resistance.
The Angklung is the traditional Sundanese bamboo musical instrument — a set of tuned bamboo tubes mounted in a frame, producing a specific pitch when shaken.
Gamelan is the bronze percussion orchestra of Java and Bali — inscribed by UNESCO in 2021 — comprising gongs, metallophones (gender, saron, bonang), drums, and other instruments.
The Irish bodhran making tradition — the production of the distinctive Irish frame drum from a single goatskin stretched over a circular wooden frame, whose specific skin tension determines the playing range and tone quality of the…
The making of bows for bowed string instruments — violin, viola, cello, double bass — from Pernambuco wood (Brazilwood) and horsehair, involving shaping the stick, creating the camber (curve), fitting the frog, and hairing, with the bow's…
The making of bowed string instruments — primarily violin, viola, and cello — in Cremona using hand tools, historically sourced tonewoods, and varnish traditions inherited from the workshops of Stradivari, Guarneri, and Amati, with each…
The making of classical and traditional Neapolitan guitars — including the distinctive chitarra battente (strummed guitar with wire strings and angled top) and the Spanish-influenced classical guitar — by hand in a tradition rooted in…
The making of the launeddas — a triple-pipe polyphonic wind instrument made from cane, unique to Sardinia and among the oldest continuously played musical instruments in Europe (documented in bronze Nuragic figurines from 1000 BC) —…
The building of the three-drum Nyabinghi ensemble — the bass (thunder), funde, and repeater (akete) — central to Rastafari ceremonial drumming, from carved or coopered wooden shells headed with natural goatskin.
The carving of a cow's horn into the abeng, a side-blown signal horn used by Jamaica's Maroon communities — descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped Spanish and British plantations to form independent free settlements in Jamaica's…
Taiko (太鼓) drum making is the tradition of producing Japan's barrel drums — from the large nagado daiko (長胴太鼓 — long-barrel drum) used in Shinto shrines and festival music, to the smaller shime daiko (締め太鼓 — tightened drum) of Noh and…
The koto (琴/箏) is Japan's national instrument — a 13-stringed zither 180cm in length produced from paulownia (桐 kiri) wood.
The sanshin (三線) is Okinawa's three-stringed lute, the ancestor of the mainland shamisen.
Shamisen (三味線 — 'three flavor strings') is Japan's three-stringed lute — the primary stringed instrument of Kabuki theater, geisha music, and contemporary Tsugaru-jamisen performance.
The dombra (Домбыра) is the primary musical instrument of Kazakh culture — a two-string fretted lute carved from a single piece of wood with a teardrop body and a long straight neck.
The making of the kobyz (qyl-qobyz) — an ancient two-stringed, horsehair-strung bowed instrument considered one of the oldest bowed instruments in Central Asia, with archaeological finds from the Kazakh Altai dated to the 6th–7th centuries…
The komuz (Комуз) is the primary musical instrument of Kyrgyz nomadic culture — a three-string fretless lute carved from a single piece of apricot or juniper wood with a thin spruce soundboard.
The Khmu bamboo musical instrument tradition encompasses the making of the khaen (mouth organ), bamboo panpipes (khui), and the bamboo jaw harp (ko) — a cluster of instruments made from the same material but requiring entirely different…
Lao bronze gong making (ຄ້ອງ khong) is the tradition of casting and hand-hammering bronze discs into tuned gongs for the khong vong (ຄ້ອງວົງ — circular gong rack), the defining instrument of Lao classical music (lam).
The making of the khaen — the free-reed bamboo mouth organ that is the national instrument of Laos and, according to UNESCO's 2017 inscription citation, an integral part of Lao life promoting family and social cohesion.
The Latvian kokle making tradition — the making of the distinctive Baltic plucked folk instrument (kokle in Latvian, kannel in Estonian, kanklės in Lithuanian) from a single piece of wood whose specific resonator box geometry produces the…
Gambus is a plucked, oud-derived stringed instrument central to Johor's traditional Malay music, built by joining and pierced-carving (ukiran tebuk tembus) select hardwoods — sesenduk, seraya, and acacia — into a resonant lute body.
Rebana ubi is a large traditional Malay bass drum from Kelantan, built by stretching animal hide — buffalo, goat, or cow — over a hardwood shell, most often cengal or meranti, and historically used to signal important community events.
Sabah's brass and bronze gong tradition — producing the canang (small flat gong), the kulintangan (set of small pot gongs), and the agung (large hanging gong) — supports the gong ensemble music that is central to ceremonial life across…
The Sompoton is the traditional mouth organ of Sabah — a free-reed bamboo instrument played by the Kadazan-Dusun, Murut, and Rungus communities.
The construction of the ravanne, a goatskin-covered frame drum, and the maravanne, a wood-framed seed-filled shaker built with panels of bound reeds or dried sugarcane flower stems, the two core instruments (alongside a metal triangle)…
A nearly 500-year-old woodworking tradition in a Purépecha pine-forest town assigned to stringed-instrument making by Michoacán's first bishop, Vasco de Quiroga, in the 16th century, sustaining a town where an estimated 90 percent of the…
A handcrafted, unvarnished folk violin descending directly from Renaissance and Baroque instruments introduced by Spanish Catholic missionaries in the mid-16th century, preserved by Rárámuri makers in a form so close to its original…
The Mongolian num (нум) — the composite recurve bow — is the most technically complex portable object in the nomadic craft vocabulary: a laminated structure of wood core, sinew backing, and horn belly that stores and releases energy more…
The making of the morin khuur — the two-stringed, horse-head-carved bowed fiddle considered Mongolia's national instrument and, since 2003, recognized by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
The carving, skin-covering, and stringing of the guembri, a three-stringed bass lute carved from a single log and covered with tanned camel or goat skin, central to Gnawa spiritual and healing music.
The manufacture and tuning of timbila, wooden xylophones central to the orchestral musical tradition of the Chopi people of southern Inhambane province, Mozambique, inscribed by UNESCO in 2008 as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible…
The Wa people of northern Shan State (on the Myanmar-Yunnan border) maintain a bamboo musical instrument making tradition encompassing the bamboo flute set (khong — played in ensemble), the buffalo horn trumpet (used in headhunting…
The bansuri (बाँसुरी) is Nepal and India's primary classical bamboo flute — a side-blown transverse flute made from a single bamboo culm with 6 or 7 finger holes.
Himalayan singing bowls are hammered metal bowls producing sustained multi-tonal singing when struck or when a mallet circles the rim.
The Dutch organ building tradition — specifically in the lineage of Arp Schnitger (CRAFT-1223 — the German master who built many organs in the Netherlands) and continued by the Dutch firm Flentrop Orgelbouw (established 1903 in Zaandam),…
A diatonic, single-row xylophone of the mestizo peoples of Nicaragua's Pacific region, distinguished from every other marimba tradition documented in this archive by its performance posture: a curved wooden bow (arco), traditionally made…
The hand-hollowing and skin-heading of Garifuna drums in Orinoco, Nicaragua's principal Garifuna community, founded in 1912 by patriarch Joseph Sambola on the northern shore of Pearl Lagoon.
The pan-Balkans woodwind instrument making tradition — the production of the two primary Balkan pastoral woodwind instruments: the kaval (end-blown flute, longer, more complex) and the frula/sviral (side-blown or end-blown short flute)…
The Hardingfele (Hardanger fiddle) making tradition — the construction of Norway's national instrument, an eight-string fiddle (four playing strings plus four resonating understrings) that produces the characteristic Norwegian…
The Sámi drum (goavddis) making tradition — the construction of the traditional Sámi drum that was the central ritual object of the noaidi (Sámi shaman) practice, confiscated and destroyed during Norwegian Christianisation (17th–18th…
The making of two related but distinct Papua New Guinea wooden drum types: kundu, a portable, hourglass-shaped, membrane-headed hand drum made and used across most regions of the country; and garamut, a large, horizontal, hollow slit drum…
Paraguay's national instrument — a lightweight, leverless diatonic harp of 32 to 46 nylon or gut strings, built from cedar, pine, or tropical hardwood, standing roughly 4.5 to 5 feet tall and weighing 8 to 10 pounds — descends from harps…
A box drum built entirely from flat wooden panels, invented by enslaved and free Afro-Peruvians along Peru's central coast — particularly around Chincha, south of Lima — after Spanish colonial authorities banned the leather drums enslaved…
The making of the guitarra portuguesa — the 12-string pear-shaped plucked instrument that is the primary melodic voice of fado.
The hand-construction, entirely from materials available on Réunion, of the four core instruments of maloya -- kayamb, roulèr, bobre, and pikèr/sati -- inscribed by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009, and directly…
The construction of the moutya drum -- a hollowed-out tree-trunk body covered with stretched goat skin -- central to Seychelles's moutya musical and dance tradition, inscribed by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural…
The carving of large hemispherical resonator drums from a single piece of solid wood by Venda craftsmen of northern South Africa (Limpopo province), most famously exemplified by the ngoma lungundu ('the drum that thunders'), the sacred…
The haegeum (two-stringed fiddle) and gayageum (12-stringed plucked zither) are the two most iconic Korean traditional instruments — and their making is a craft tradition of considerable technical precision.
The making of classical and flamenco guitars in the Madrid tradition — the lineage descended from Antonio de Torres (Almería; 1817–1892) whose innovations defined the modern classical guitar.
The making of the Galician bagpipe (gaita galega) — the defining musical instrument of Galician identity, distinct from the Scottish and Irish bagpipes in its use of a single drone (ronco) instead of multiple drones and its specific…
The making of flamenco guitars in the Granada tradition — technically distinct from the Madrid classical guitar tradition (CRAFT-1018) in four key ways: cypress wood back and sides (instead of rosewood — lighter; brighter; more…
The carving, skinning, and tuning of the apinti, a single-headed conical membranophone central to Suriname Maroon communities (Ndyuka/Aukan, Saamaka, Paramaka, Aluku, Kwinti, Matawai), paired with the intensive oral training required to…
The making of the Alphorn — the wooden natural horn of the Swiss Alps, typically 3–4 meters long, made from a single curved spruce log that is split, hollowed, rejoined, and shaped into the characteristic curved tube.
The violin making tradition of Brienz — a complement to the wood carving tradition (CRAFT-1266) at the same location, where the Schnitzschule Brienz has trained not only figurative carvers but also instrument makers in the broader Alpine…
The movement finishing tradition of Geneva haute horlogerie — the supreme tier of Swiss watchmaking, governed by the Poinçon de Genève (Geneva Seal) quality mark, which requires that every component of a watch movement be individually…
The watchcase making (boîtage) tradition of the Jura Arc — the finishing and polishing of the precious metal cases that house Swiss watch movements.
The watchmaking tradition of the Jura Arc — the mountain region stretching across the cantons of Neuchâtel, Jura, and Berne that contains the world's highest concentration of watchmaking expertise, centered on the UNESCO World Heritage…
The automata making tradition of Neuchâtel — specifically in the lineage of Pierre Jaquet-Droz (1721–1790), whose three surviving automata (The Draughtsman, The Writer, and The Musician, all at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire Neuchâtel)…
Thai classical musical instrument making encompasses the production of the instruments of the piphat and mahori ensembles — the primary classical orchestras of Thailand.
The sinking, marking, cutting, and hammer-tuning of 55-gallon industrial oil drums into the steelpan — the only entirely new family of acoustic instruments invented in the 20th century, and Trinidad and Tobago's national instrument.
The Turkish ney making tradition — the making of the specific end-blown reed flute from the Arundo donax reed that is the central instrument of the Mevlevi Sufi tradition (the whirling dervishes of Konya), whose specific bore geometry,…
The making of the dutar — a long-necked, two-stringed, pear-bodied lute considered the defining instrument of Turkmen musical culture, inscribed by UNESCO in December 2021 (as 'Dutar making craftsmanship and traditional music performing…
The carving of wooden drums from single logs, hollowed and finished with stretched cowhide, by craftsmen of Mpambire village, near Mukono, Uganda's most famous drum-making community.
The construction of the habban, a traditional bagpipe of the Emirati and wider Arab Gulf musical heritage, formed from a whole goat skin sewn into an airtight bag, with an insufflation pipe fitted into one foreleg opening and a double…
The making of the Great Highland Bagpipe — Scotland's defining national instrument, consisting of a bag (traditionally sheepskin, now synthetic), three drones (bass and two tenors), and a chanter, all made from African blackwood (Dalbergia…
The building of a fretted, hourglass-shaped lap zither played flat across the knees, adapted in the early 19th-century Appalachian Mountains from European scheitholt, langspil, and épinette des Vosges instrument traditions brought by…
The candombe tambor — a lightweight, single-headed, barrel-shaped drum built from wooden staves (duelas), open at the end opposite its stretched hide head — is the essential instrument of candombe, the Afro-Uruguayan musical and dance…
The carving of tam tam — towering wooden slit-gong drums documented as among the largest freestanding musical instruments on Earth, and explicitly identified in contemporary Vanuatu craft-tourism literature as the country's most iconic…
The construction of the culo'e puya, a set of three conical, double-headed drums central to Afro-Venezuelan San Juan festival music in Barlovento, Miranda state.
The construction of the cuatro venezolano, a small four-string guitar descended from the Renaissance vihuela and central to joropo music and Venezuelan national identity, historically built almost entirely from native cedro (cedar) wood.
The construction of the furro (also furruco), the friction bass instrument that anchors gaita de furro — the most widely recognized form of gaita zuliana, Venezuela's Christmas-season musical genre centered on Maracaibo and Lake Maracaibo.
The gong culture of Vietnam's Central Highlands — practiced by the Ede, Jarai, Bahnar, Mnong, and other highland ethnic groups — was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List in 2005 as one of the first Vietnamese UNESCO nominations.
The making of traditional Vietnamese barrel drums (trống) at Đọi Tam village, Đọi Sơn commune, Hà Nam province — a craft with an unbroken village tradition said to span roughly a thousand years, credited by village legend to a 10th-century…
The Mnong and Ede peoples of the Central Highlands maintain a blacksmithing and metalwork tradition that includes the production and repair of ceremonial iron objects, agricultural tools, and the maintenance of bronze ritual objects.