Raised in a family of musicians, Melissa Little Wolf Villalobos was introduced to Native American music by her elders. She first heard the sounds of Native American flautist R. Carols Nakai, of Navajo ...

From a Japanese bamboo flute that is harvested and then cured to an unusual fretless zither and a blue Fender Strat, three performers tell the stories of the instruments they cherish A central figure ...

Imagine a sound, a tone. Engineering and math might go into creating a musical instrument that can make that tone, but that same sound also depends on acoustics, perception, creativity — a multitude ...

You have probably heard this sound before. This is the first thing that shakuhachi player Kojiro Umezaki tells people who aren’t familiar with his instrument. Maybe you’ve heard the vertical bamboo ...

Lizzo is basking in her historical glory after playing a two-century-old crystal flute previously owned by the fourth president of the United States. The “About Damn Time” and “Truth Hurts” singer, ...

He raises the hollowed block of wood to his lips, draws a breath and then exhales. An F-sharp hovers in the morning air and then vanishes. It’s called “first breath,” Kent Bush says. Many flutes come ...

One of Tanzania’s most endangered possessions isn’t its wildlife; it’s its music. Dozens of musical instruments – and the skill set to play them – are facing extinction in Tanzania, which is why ...