Traditional Musical Instruments of Nepal: A Complete Directory

Nepal has an unusually rich stock of traditional musical instruments for a country of its size, a direct reflection of the more than 100 ethnic and caste groups who each brought their own drums, flutes, fiddles and cymbals. The single most iconic is the madal (m.dal), a horizontal two-headed hand drum recognised as the national instrument of Nepal and the rhythmic backbone of most Nepali folk (lok) music. Around it sits a huge family of regional instruments, many of them tied to a specific community, ritual or season.

The scale of that diversity is best illustrated by the Music Museum of Nepal in Tripureshwor, Kathmandu, which has catalogued 655 distinct folk instruments out of more than 1,350 collected from across the country since founder Ram Prasad Kadel began gathering them in 1995. Wikipedia's own reference list stresses that these instruments 'are not standardized', so seemingly identical drums or flutes can carry different names, tunings and meanings depending on the language, region and ethnicity of the players.

Many Nepali instruments are inseparable from the people who traditionally make and play them: the bowed sarangi belongs to the Gandharba (Gaine) minstrel caste, the panche baja wedding band to the Damai tailor-musicians, the damphu frame drum to the Tamang, and the thunderous dhime drum to the Newar farming communities of the Kathmandu Valley. This directory groups the main instruments by their scientific class and describes how each is built, who plays it, and how it sounds.

Ethnomusicologists sort instruments worldwide using the Hornbostel-Sachs system, which divides them into four broad families according to what actually vibrates to make the sound. Nepal's traditional instruments fit neatly into all four, and this directory is organised the same way so that similar instruments can be compared side by side.

The four families are membranophones (drums, where a stretched skin vibrates), chordophones (stringed instruments, where a string vibrates), aerophones (wind instruments, where a column of air vibrates) and idiophones (self-sounding instruments made of a naturally resonant material such as metal, bamboo or shell). Nepal is especially strong in membranophones and metal idiophones, both central to Hindu and Buddhist ritual and to festival processions.

The madal leads this family and is played across almost every Nepali ethnic group. Its wooden barrel bulges slightly at the centre and carries two goat-skin heads of unequal size, tuned with a black paste on the membranes and adjustable leather lacing. Played horizontally across the lap, both heads struck at once, it produces the crisp treble-and-bass pattern that drives songs from the hills to modern pop. The dholak is essentially a larger relative of the madal and appears in bhajan (devotional) and wedding music.

The Newar communities of the Kathmandu Valley maintain their own percussion tradition. The dhime (dhimay) is a large barrel drum, roughly 60 by 30 centimetres, with goat-hide heads; carried on a strap, one head is struck by the bare hand and the other with a bent cane stick, and its deep boom announces the presence of Newar culture at any jatra (festival procession). Closely related Newar drums include the khin, the naykhin (a ritual 'funeral drum' played by the Khadgi community) and the dhaa, a temple drum tuned with paste applied inside one head.

Other communities have signature drums too. The damphu is a single-headed circular frame drum of the Tamang people, its skin held by 32 pegs said to represent the 32 lakshanas (auspicious marks) of the Buddha; it accompanies the beloved Tamang Selo song form at weddings, funerals and festivals. Larger ceremonial drums include the damaha, a copper kettledrum topped with cowhide that anchors the panche baja ensemble, and the nagara, a big copper kettledrum historically sounded at victory ceremonies and still heard during Dashain.

Nepal's most famous chordophone is the sarangi, a short-necked fiddle carved from a single block of soft wood (often khirro or tun) with a box-like body hollowed into chambers the players poetically call pet (stomach), chaati (chest) and magaj (brain). It carries four strings, traditionally of gut but now usually nylon or steel, bowed with a horsehair (now often nylon) bow just above the bridge. Its keening, voice-like tone is unmistakable.

The Nepali sarangi is historically the instrument of the Gandharba, also known as Gaine, a hereditary caste of travelling minstrels who wandered village to village singing narrative ballads, news and karkha (heroic songs) for their living. In this way the sarangi and its players functioned as a living newspaper and oral archive of the hills long before radio, and the tradition remains a powerful marker of Gandharba identity.

The other notable string instrument is the tungna (tungana), a plucked lute about 75 centimetres long with four strings and a soundboard of stretched sheep or goat skin. It is played by Himalayan communities including Tamang, Sherpa, Thakali and Hyolmo to accompany singing and dancing.

The bansuri is a simple side-blown bamboo flute of uniform bore, usually with six finger-holes, and is among the oldest and most widespread melodic instruments in Nepal. Cheap to make and easy to carry, it accompanies herders, folk songs and classical raga alike, and its breathy, mellow tone is a fixture of Nepali film and folk recordings.

The loudest winds belong to the processional and reed families. The sahanai (a Nepali shawm related to the Indian shehnai) uses a quadruple-reed mouthpiece feeding a wooden body that flares into a metal bell, producing the piercing, celebratory melody line of wedding bands. Long metal trumpets add power and drama: the narsingha is a slim, crescent- or S-shaped horn made from sections of thin copper sheet, while the karnal is a long, straight copper trumpet ending in a wide flower-shaped bell, both crafted and blown by Damai musicians.

Ritual wind instruments round out the group. The sankha (shankha), a conch-shell trumpet, is blown at Hindu and Buddhist rites, temple worship and auspicious moments, its single sustained note marking the sacred. In Buddhist Tamang and Sherpa monasteries the ghyaling shawm is played in identical pairs alongside long dungchen trumpets during prayers.

The murchunga is Nepal's celebrated jaw harp (also called a Jew's harp or mouth harp), a small metal frame with a flexible central tongue. Held against the teeth and plucked with a finger, it uses the player's own mouth as a resonating chamber, letting a single skilled musician shape a surprisingly full, buzzing, rhythmic drone. It is especially associated with the Kirat (Kirati) peoples of eastern Nepal and features in courtship songs and hillside pastimes.

A close cousin is the binayo, a jaw harp cut from a strip of malingo bamboo rather than metal, played mainly in the eastern Himalayan region within the Kiranti (especially Rai) tradition. Roughly six inches long, it is sounded by plucking or by directing the breath across the reed, giving a softer, more organic timbre than the metallic murchunga.

Among metal idiophones the most prominent are the jhyamta or jhyali (also jhurma), large hand cymbals of brass or bronze up to about 25 centimetres across with a raised central boss. Held horizontally and swept across each other, they produce the sustained shimmering crash that keeps time in the panche baja and in Newar and temple music, and in Vedic symbolism they are said to represent the element of fire.

Several of these instruments come together in the panche baja, literally the 'five instruments', the traditional Nepali wedding and auspicious-ceremony band. The five are usually the sahanai (shawm), the damaha and the smaller tyamko (kettledrums), the jhyali or jhurma (cymbals) and the narsingha (curved trumpet), though sources vary and the karnal or dholaki is sometimes counted among them. Together the five are said to embody the five elements (panchatatva) and their music is considered indispensable to an auspicious Hindu wedding.

A grander version is the naumati baja, the 'nine instruments' ensemble used for larger processions and important rituals, which expands the same core with paired trumpets and shawms. Both ensembles are traditionally the hereditary craft of the Damai, a Dalit tailor-caste whose musicians build, tune and play the instruments, meaning the survival of these ensembles is closely bound to the social recognition of their players.

These processional bands are living heritage rather than museum pieces: they still lead grooms to weddings, open bratabandha (coming-of-age) rites and accompany temple festivals across the hills, even as recorded music competes with them.

Because so many of these instruments belong to specific castes and shrinking oral traditions, several are genuinely endangered, and formal institutions now work to document and revive them. The Music Museum of Nepal (Nepali Folk Musical Instrument Museum), founded by Ram Prasad Kadel, registered as a charity in 1997 and housed since 2007 at the Tripureshwor Mahadev temple in Kathmandu, holds 655 distinct folk instruments and maintains an archive of audio-visual recordings, some digitised with support from the British Library's Endangered Archives Programme and UNESCO/ICHCAP.

On the government side, the Nepal Academy of Music and Drama (NAMUDA, Nepali: Nepal Sangeet tatha Natya Pragya Pratishthan) was created under the Nepal Academy of Music and Drama Act, 2064 BS (2007 AD) and inaugurated in 2067 BS (2010 AD). It is the national body charged with protecting, promoting and researching Nepal's music, dance and drama, and it honours veteran artists through annual national awards.

For students and travellers, the practical takeaway is that Nepal's instruments are best understood together with their communities and calendars: hear the madal in any lok geet, the sarangi from a Gandharba singer, the damphu at a Tamang gathering, the dhime at a Newar jatra, and the panche baja at a hill wedding. The Music Museum in Tripureshwor is the single best place to see the full range under one roof.