Folk and Ethnic Musical Instruments

The family of reed pipes embraces instruments like the saxophone or the oboe, whose sound is produced by the player blowing against one or several reeds and whose pitch is determined by changing the length of a vibrating air column (as opposed to the free reeds (accordeon etc.) where the pitch is controlled by the length and gauge of the reed).

Reedpipes are subdivided into single reeds, where a singel reed vibrates against a mouthpiece (clarinet, saxophone) and double reeds, where two reeds vibrate against each other (oboe, bassoon, english horn, crumhorn, bagpipes, shawm etc.) In the bagpipes or the crumhorn, a cover containing a duct is placed over the reeds, enabling the player to blow without touching the reeds. Single reeds and double reeds both are beating reeds, as opposed to free reeds which vibrate freely.

World music forms of single reeds include the albogue from Spain, the launeddas or triplepipe from Italy, the 'modern tarogato' or schundaphone from Eastern Europe and the mijwiz and the arghul from the Arabic world. World music forms of double reeds include the duduk from Eastern Europe and the Middle East, the mey from Turkey, the zurna from Iran, the guan or guanzi from China, the piri from Corea and the hichiriki from Japan. Some instruments, like the shenai from India, the sralai from Cambodia or the the pi family of instruments from Thailand use two pairs of reeds vibrating against each other and are therefore referred to as quatruple reeds.

The shwam, a double reed instrument from medieval Europe evolved from the Persian zurna and ancestral to the modern oboe is nowadays almost completely forgotten. It managed to survive, however, in such distant locations as Guatemala - to where it was brought by the Spanish and is known as the chirimia - and in Japan, where it was introduced by Portuguese missionaries and developed into the charumera or charumeru.