List of national instruments (music)

This list contains musical instrument

Musical instrument

A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...

s of symbolic or cultural importance within a nation

Nation

A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and/or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government irrespective of their ethnic make-up...

, state

Sovereign state

A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...

, ethnicity, tribe

Tribe

A tribe, viewed historically or developmentally, consists of a social group existing before the development of, or outside of, states.Many anthropologists use the term tribal society to refer to societies organized largely on the basis of kinship, especially corporate descent groups .Some theorists...

or other group of people. In some cases, national instruments remain in wide use within the nation (such as the Puerto Rican

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

cuatro
Cuatro (instrument)
The cuatro is any of several Latin American instruments of the guitar or lute family. The cuatro is smaller than a guitar. Cuatro means four in Spanish, although current instruments may have more than four strings....

), but in others, their importance is primarily symbolic (such as the Welsh triple harp). Danish ethnologist Lisbet Torp has concluded that some national instrument traditions, such as the Finnish kantele
Kantele
A kantele or kannel is a traditional plucked string instrument of the zither family native to Finland, Estonia, and Karelia. It is related to the Russian gusli, the Latvian kokle and the Lithuanian kanklės. Together these instruments make up the family known as Baltic psalteries...

, are invented, pointing to the "influence of intellectuals and nationalists in the nationwide promotion of selected musical instruments as a vehicle for nationalistic

Nationalism

Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

ideas". Governments do not generally officially recognize national instruments; the only exceptions are the Paraguayan harp

Paraguayan harp

The Paraguayan harp is the national instrument of Paraguay, and similar instruments are used elsewhere in South America, particularly Venezuela....

, the Japanese

Japanese people

The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...

koto
Koto (musical instrument)
The koto is a traditional Japanese stringed musical instrument, similar to the Chinese guzheng, the Mongolian yatga, the Korean gayageum and the Vietnamese đàn tranh. The koto is the national instrument of Japan. Koto are about length, and made from kiri wood...

and the Trinidad

Trinidad

Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...

ian steelpan

Steelpan

Steelpans is a musical instrument originating from The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago...

.

Not every country has a national instrument. Denmark, for example, has no recognized national instrument, though the ancient lur
Lur
A lur is a long natural blowing horn without finger holes that is played by embouchure. Lurs can be straight or curved in various shapes. The purpose of the curves was to make long instruments easier to carry A lur is a long natural blowing horn without finger holes that is played by embouchure....

has been seen as a national symbol. Some countries that do not have a widely recognized national instrument have been home to movements that seek to give a particular instrument that status. The United States is home to an organization—led by kazoo

Kazoo

The kazoo is a wind instrument which adds a "buzzing" timbral quality to a player's voice when the player vocalizes into it. The kazoo is a type of mirliton, which is a membranophone, a device which modifies the sound of a person's voice by way of a vibrating membrane."Kazoo" was the name given by...

player and composer Barbara Stewart

Barbara Stewart (composer)

Barbara Stewart is an American composer and musician, known for her work on the kazoo, both in those fields and as a speaker, researcher and author. She has appeared on The Tonight Show and performed at Carnegie Hall. Stewart is the founder of the group Kazoophony, and has been called a "kazoo...

—that seeks to make the kazoo the national instrument, calling it "uniquely American" and "the most democratic of instruments". This accomplishment may turn out to be unachievable given a belief widely held in the banjo player community. Frank Rossi ardently promotes the belief that President Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...

declared the banjo the National Instrument of the United States via Presidential Proclamation

Presidential Proclamation

A Presidential Proclamation is a statement issued by a President on a matter of public policy. They are generally defined as, "The act of causing some state matters to be published or made generally known...

in 1947.

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. Each instrument on this list has a Hornbostel-Sachs

Hornbostel-Sachs

Hornbostel–Sachs is a system of musical instrument classification devised by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs, and first published in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1914. An English translation was published in the Galpin Society Journal in 1961...

number immediately below it. 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.

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. 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. Alternative names and spellings are given. These mostly come from alternative spellings within English or alternative methods of transliterating

Transliteration

Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

from a foreign language to English, such as the Chinese

Chinese people

The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....

yangqin
Yangqin
The trapezoidal yangqin is a Chinese hammered dulcimer, originally from Middle East and Persia . It used to be written with the characters 洋琴 , but over time the first character changed to 揚 , which means "acclaimed". It is also spelled yang quin or yang ch'in...

, also transliterated yang ch'in and yang qin. Others reflect regions or subcultures within a given nation, such as the Australian didgeridoo

Didgeridoo

The didgeridoo is a wind instrument developed by Indigenous Australians of northern Australia around 1,500 years ago and still in widespread usage today both in Australia and around the world. It is sometimes described as a natural wooden trumpet or "drone pipe"...

which is or has been called didjeridu, yidaki, yiraki, magu, kanbi and ihambilbilg in various Australian Aboriginal languages

Australian Aboriginal languages

The Australian Aboriginal languages comprise several language families and isolates native to the Australian Aborigines of Australia and a few nearby islands, but by convention excluding the languages of Tasmania and the Torres Strait Islanders...

. All non-English words are italicized.

Further reading