Musical Instruments

Hide stretched tight over hollowed wood. Antique musical instruments and ritual drums here come from the Asmat of West Papua, the Mossi of Burkina Faso, Tibet, China, India and across Africa. Asmat ceremonial drums, carved in an hourglass form with a single handle and a lizard-skin head, were played at feasts and ceremonies. From Tibet come a damaru hourglass drum, a kangling trumpet of bone, a drum painted with the dorje, and a conch trumpet mounted in silver with turquoise and coral.

Mossi whistles and flutes, Zaramo harps from Tanzania, a Makonde slit drum, Mbuti molimo trumpets, a Lega conch trumpet, a Baule drum and an Amhara drum from Ethiopia join carved drums from the Huon Gulf and the Star Mountains of Papua New Guinea. There are Beijing opera drums, an iron temple gong, a Bhutanese cymbal and Indian singing bowls. Hang flutes in a row on a plaster wall or stand a drum in a corner as quiet sculpture. Most of them have earned the rest.