Inflated animal skin and other musical instruments

Did it ever happen that you stumble upon something flabergasting for a minute and add no value, then dig deep, and a wormhole opens up, and WOW, you are Alice, and you are in a wonderland? For instance. This.

Today, I started with an inflated Buffalo akin raft, which apparently was used as a safety west to cross small rivers. Or even as a raft with a set of them to hold an entire water barge. Fascinating! If you asked me to guess with ten guesses given to me, I would never have pointed out that it was in India!

Then I moved on to Ney-anbān, and inflated sheep/goat skin on its end form looks like the carcass of a dead animal, and its limbs were used to control the airflow and thus music! Fascinating and disgusting simultaneously, I would never attempt to learn this; I can’t imagine myself blowing into a has-been animal’s rectum 🙂

It is highly likely that this is an ancestor of bagpipes.

Then I moved on to Tsampouna, Askomandoura and Dankiyo. Google them, and you will be enlightened. After exploring its version in Europe and the Middle East, to my surprise, we had our own, and they even played them in the temples. It was called Sruti Upanga. Then, it is possibly related to Mashakbeen of Uttarakhand and Tittii of South India!!

I can’t believe they were allowed to take it inside a temple!