| Name | Image | Tradition | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manjira |  | India | The Manjira is a traditional percussion instrument in India. It is a pair of tiny hand cymbals. The Manjira is used in various religious ceremonies of India, especially bhajans - devotional songs dedicated to some Indian god or goddess. |
| Maraca |  | Puerto Rico | Maraca, or rhumba shaker, is a simple percussion instruments (idiophones), usually played in pairs. The maraca is made out of the hollowed shell of the fruit of the "crescentia cujete" evergreen tree. A piece of wood pierces through the shell as a handle and dried seeds or pebbles inside rattle when the musicians shake the instrument. |
| Maravanne |  | Mauritius | The maravanne, or kayamb, is a flat percussion instrument used in the Mascarene Islands to play sega and maloya music. Maravanne is made of reed (or sugar cane flower stems) and is filled with jequirity (Crab's Eye) or canna seeds, it is shaken horizontally with both hands. |
| Marimba |  | Guatemala | Guatemala's national instrument is the marimba, an idiophone from the family of the xylophones, which is played all over the country, even in the remotest corners. The marimba is used to play a variety of styles of music, including both local folk and internationally well-known and sophisticated popular music. Keys or bars (usually made of wood) are struck with mallets to produce musical tones. The keys are arranged as those of a piano, with the accidentals raised vertically and overlapping the natural keys to aid the performer both visually and physically. The marimba's first documentary evidence of existence comes from an account of a performance in front of the cathedral of Santiago de Guatemala, present-day Antigua Guatemala, in 1680. |
| marímbula |  | Cuba | A marímbula (pronounced "mah-REAM-boo-lah") is a folk musical instrument of Caribbean Islands. With its roots in African instruments, marimbula originated in the province of Oriente, Cuba in 19th century. Eventually it spread throughout the Caribbean and the Americas. The sound of a marimbula is produced by plucking the free ends of springy plates ("tongues" or keys) attached by one end to a resonator box. |
| Mark Tree |  | United States | A mark tree (also known as a chime tree or set of bar chimes) is a percussion instrument used primarily for musical color. It consists of many small chimes – typically cylinders of solid metal approximately 6 mm (one-quarter inch) in diameter – of varying lengths mounted hanging from a bar. The chimes are played by sweeping a finger or stick through the length of the hanging chimes. They are mounted in pitch order to produce rising or falling glissandos. The mark tree is named after its inventor, studio percussionist Mark Stevens. He devised the instrument in 1967. |
| Mbila |  | Mozambique | Mbila is a musical xylophone of Mozambique, belonging to the idiophone classification within the percussion family of instruments. Plural of the instrument is timbila. The Mbila achieves sound amplification using resonators made from the spherical hard shells of the Masala Apple, one mounted under each key. The tuning of any a key is achieved through first roasting the wood around a fire and then shaping the the key to achieve the desired tone. The resonator is tuned to the key through (1) the careful choice of size of resonator, (2) the adjustment of the diameter of the mouth of the resonator using wasp wax, and (3) adjustment of the height of the key above the resonator. The mbila is played by striking the bars with mallets. The instrument is traditionally associated with the Chopi people of the Inhambane Province, in southern Mozambique. |
| Mbira |  | Zimbabwe | In Zimbabwean music, the mbira is a musical instrument consisting of a wooden board to which staggered metal keys have been attached. It is often fitted into a deze that functions as a resonator. Mbira performances are usually accompanied by hosho (a type of rattle). The Mbira Dzavadzimu is very significant in Shona religion and culture. It is the national instrument of Zimbabwe, and is considered sacred. |
| Mihbaj |  | Syria | A mihbaj (Arabic: مهباج) is a traditional Bedouin implement, made of a wooden foot-tall base with a two-foot pestle, that serves both as a coffee grinder and as a percussion instrument. It is one of the few instruments used in Bedouin music. |
| Morsing |  | India | A morsing (also mourching or morching) is a percussion instrument, mainly used in the Carnatic music of South India. It can be categorized under lamellophones, which is in the category of plucked idiophones. It consists of a metal ring in the shape of a horseshoe with two parallel forks which form the frame. There is a metal tongue between the forks. It is fixed to the ring at one end and free to vibrate at the other. The metal tongue is bent at the free end in a plane perpendicular to the circular ring so that it can be struck and is made to vibrate. This bent part is called the trigger. |
| Musical Box |  | Switzerland | A musical box (or music box) is a 19th century automatic musical instrument that produces sounds by the use of a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc so as to strike the tuned teeth of a steel comb. They were developed from musical snuff boxes of the 18th century and called carillons à musique. Some of the more complex boxes also have a tiny drum and small bells, in addition to the metal comb. The image shows a musical box with dancing ballerina. |
| Musical Saw |  | United States | A musical saw is the application of a hand saw as a musical instrument. The saw is generally played seated with the handle squeezed between the legs, and the far end held with one hand. It is generally played with the teeth facing the body, though some more timid players opt to face them away. To make a note, a sawyer first bends the blade into an S-curve. The parts of the blade which are curved are dampened from vibration, and do not sound. At the center of the S-curve a section of the blade remains relatively flat: this "sweet spot" can vibrate across the width of the blade, producing a distinct pitch (the wider the section of blade, the lower the sound). Sound can be created by drawing a bow across the back edge of the saw at the sweet spot, or by striking the sweet spot with a mallet. |
| Musical Stones |  | England | The Musical Stones of Skiddaw (see image) is a lithophone made of a type of slate found in Cumbria, England. Constructed at the end of the eighteenth century, the instrument has entertained royalty; it is now housed at the Keswick Museum and Art Gallery in Cumbria. In January 2006 the Musical Stones reached a large national audience when they were heavily featured as part of a BBC BBC Radio 4 documentary on Cumbrian musical stones presented by the top classical percussionist Evelyn Glennie. |
| New Singing Bowls |  | Nepal | New singing bowls may be plain or decorated. They sometimes feature religious iconography and spiritual motifs and symbols, such as the Tibetan mantra Om mani padme hum, images of Buddhas, and Ashtamangala. New singing bowls are made from industrial quality metal, mainly copper. They are exported widely from Nepal and India. New singing bowls and crystal bowls do not produce the warm and complex tone of fine antique singing bowls. They sound like clear and simple bells, without the warm undertones and bright harmonic overtones for which antiques are famous. |
| Nipple Gong |  | Thailand | Nipple gongs have a raised boss or nipple in the centre, often made of a different metal to the rest of the gong. They have a clear resonant tone with less shimmer than other gongs, and two distinct sounds depending on whether they are struck on the boss or next to it. They most often are tuned to various pitches. Nipple gongs range in size from 6" to 14" or larger. Sets of smaller, tuned nipple gongs can be used to play a tune. The image shows a very large nipple gong at a Buddhist temple in Roi Et, Isan, Thailand. |
| Noah Bells |  | India | "Noah Bells" is the common name given to a distinct type of bell hand-manufactured in India by ancient and inherited traditions. Some monasteries in India are credited with manufacturing Noah Bells for hundreds of years. These bells are popular among collectors because of their intricate resonances and also because of the mystique that surrounds them. Old Indian belief holds that Noah Bells scare away devils and evil spirits. |
| Ogene |  | Nigeria | Ogene (gong) is a large metal bell. It has historically been made by the Igbo people of Nigeria. It is one of the most important metal instruments of the tribe. The Ogene is commonly used as a "master instrument" in a bell orchestra in the Omambala River basin of the Igbo. It is made of iron by specialist blacksmiths. The bell has a flattish, conical shape, and is hollow inside. The sound itself comes from the vibration of the iron body when struck, which is made to resound by the hollow inside of the bell. The iron body is usually struck with a soft wooden stick. |
| Paiban |  | China | Paiban (Chinese: 拍板) is an ancient wood instrument from China. It is a clapper made from several flat pieces of wood. |
| Pidkova |  | Ukraine | The Pidkova (Ukrainian: Підкова) literarily "Horseshoe". In some Ukrainian folk instrument ensembles a steel horseshoe dangling from the end of a gut string is struck with a piece of metal wire. This produced a high-pitched ringing sound similar to a triangle. |
| Putipu |  | Italy | The putipu is a traditional folk percussion instrument of Naples (a historic city in southern Italy.) It consists of a membrane stretched across a resonating chamber, like a drum. A handle attached to the membrane compresses air rhythmically within the chamber; the air then spurts out of the not-quite-hermetic seal that fastens the membrane to the wooden body of the instrument to produce a "burping" sound. |
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