Famous Indian Musical Instruments

Music is part of life to every living being, particularly human beings, who not only enjoys the melody or gaiety of it, but also travel through its nuances and philosophies, surrendering totally every aspect of life, Indian kingdoms of those days sported a number of talented musicians in their royal courts, , which are commonly rendered through string instruments, wind instruments, percussion instruments and other varieties involving vessels filled with water.

Veena, the string instrument played with hand is predominant among Indian Musical Instruments, legends conveying sensational information that the Epic character Ravan, was well talented in playing  this instrument those days, which is mostly practiced and rendered by famous artists from the Southern part of India.

Sitar is another string instrument which is now worldwide famous, thanks to dedicated and talented artists like Pt Ravi Shankar who has established coaching centres for playing this instrument at various countries in the Globe.

Nagaswaram is a wind instrument played by the mouth, with high pitch and speaking melodies born out of different Karnatic ragas of the south, which is played not only for entertainment for hours, but also for conveying sacred sentiments such as Wedding and auspicious functions, to go with an accompaniment of the percussion instrument of Drum, which is played by the drummer with a hand on one side and a stick on the other side, sometimes making conversations with the audience through the wonderful sounds he makes out of he instrument.

Flute is another wind instrument, which is supposed to have been played by Lord Krishna himself to attract not only the cow herds but also the Gopikas, the sweet fine ladies in the village, who get mesmerized by his flute recitals, which is referred in its Sanskrit name Venu.

Violin is another string and bow instrument, which is mostly an accompaniment to a vocal music rendition, to go with another percussion instrument called Mridangam, which is played by hand of the artist on both the sides of the instrument,  while violin came to India during British times, its origin is attributed to ancient Indias ‘Bahuleyan’ which means string born out of one’s hand, incidentally this term referring to one of the Holy trinities, Lord Shiva.

Jaltarang is one of the ancient instrumental music in India, with small basins containing water of different quantities filled to make different sounds, the artist playing around with a stick to make different sounds, the music still conforming to the science of Indian Classical music, that way India has variety of Instrumental music, giving joy and ecstasy to the audience of every kind, not to speak of millions conforming to the folk music requirements.

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