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Folk and World Music Instruments

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Lagouto - See Lavouto.

Lahute - Eight-stringed instrument in the lute family, tuned in fifths. A folk instrument of the Kosovar Albanians.

Lai - New Zealand's wooden drum.

Lajas de piedra - chips of stone. Used in popular Andalusian folk music.

Lakolosy - small bells (Madagascar).

Lali - two large slit log drums (Beqa, the Pacific) .

Lambe - bass drum with closed bottom used in a sabar drum set. Wolof (Senegal).

Lamellae - African pygmy (Efé) thumb piano.

Langeleik - Norwegian zither.

Langspil - a bowed stringed instrument from Iceland. It consists of an oblong box with two strings, one of which is a drone.

Laouto - See Lavouto

Lapas - limpet shells used as a percussion instrument in the Canary Islands. Two shells are struck against each other creating a sound like a castanet.

Larchemi - Georgian name for the panpipes.

Latpipa - a Swedish wooden whistle usually with eight finger hole.

Laúd – Spanish lute. It has a flat back, with 12 metal strings in 6 courses and a pear shaped body.

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Launeddas - a polyphonic reed instrument from Sardinia (Italy), which is made up of three canes. It is also known as the triple pipe. Since it requires a constant flow of air it is played using circular breathing.

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Lavouto - Greek lute.

Lavta - Turkish lute.

Leizi bili - Vertical flute indigenous to the Naxi minority of China.

Lera - Persian flute.

Limbe - Mongolian shawm.

Limbi - Tuvan flute.

Limbindi - a bow instrument From the Baka forest people of southeast Cameroon. A strong vine is used as the cord and a strong, elastic branch used as the bow. To change the pitch of the notes the cord is held under the player's chin which is slid forward and back raising and lowering the pitch. Linga - Wooden slit-drum. A tree or a solid block of wood is hollowed out to leave a longitudinal opening on the upper side. The edges of this slit are of unequal thickness and produce two sounds of different pitch when struck. They are generally used in groups of three instruments of different size. Each player hammers the edges of the slit with a pair of mallets to produce two different notes (Central African Republic).  

Linkwin – Burmese cymbals.

Lirica - Small fiddle with three strings, held on the knee and bowed like cello, from Dalmatia.

Litungu - Kenyan harp.

Liuqin – a Chinese lute. It looks like a smaller version of the pipa.

Lo - a small Chinese flat gong, about 20 cm wide (8 inches).

Lojki - wooden spoons, popular Russian percussion.

Lokanga - a southern Malagasy fiddle, descended from ancestral Arab and South African box-shaped fiddles.

Lotar - Moroccan pear-shaped lute.

Lote - Pygmy notched flute played primarily by elders.

Lothar - See Lotar.

Lusheng - a mouth organ used by the minority nationalities in southwestern China (Yunnan, Guizhou), with pipes of varying lengths.

Luta - Swedish term for the lute.

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Lute – a class of string instruments that can be plucked or bowed. They are made out of wood and have a pear shaped body. They originated from the Arabic ud.

Last Updated Sunday, April 18 2004 @ 08:16 PM EDT|19,744 Hits