Traditional French musical instruments

Traditional French musical instruments, known as instruments traditionnels in French, are musical instruments used in the traditional folk music of France. They comprise a range of string, wind, and percussion instruments.

Percussion instruments

Gumbe — a French Guianan frame drum
Kayamb (caïamb/kayanm) — a shaken Réunionnais idiophone
Pahu — a French Polynesian drum
Pate — a French Polynesian and Wallisian/Futunan log drum
Rouleur — a Réunionnais drum
Sunaglieri — Corsican mule bells
Timpanu — a Corsican triangle

String instruments

Cetera — a cittern of 4 to 8 double strings that is of Tuscan origin and dates back to the Renaissance, is the most iconic Corsican traditional instrument. Its most prominent exponent is Roland Ferrandi (also a lutenist).
Cythara — a lute
Epinette des Vosges — a traditional plucked-string instrument of the zither family from the Vosges region in eastern France^[1]
Mandulina — a Corsican mandolin
Mandore — a musical instrument, a small member of the lute family, teardrop shaped, with four to six courses of gut strings and pitched in the treble range.
Tambourin à cordes — a box zither from southern France
Ukulele — a small, guitar-like instrument from French Polynesia

Bowed

Basse de Flandre — a simple large stringed fiddle (a musical bow) made with a long stick from French Flanders in Hauts-de-France.
Bobre — a bowed instrument from Réunion
Vielle à roue — a mechanical string instrument that produces sound by a hand-crank-turned, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings.

Wind instruments

Flutes

French flutes are called flûte. There are many traditional flutes.

Pu toka — a French Polynesian conch
Pu'akau — a French Polynesian flute
Pūʻili — a French Polynesian bamboo flute
Vivo — a French Polynesian nose flute

Reed Instruments

Bombarde (music) — a contemporary conical-bore double-reed instrument (shawm) from Brittany
Cialamedda (also cialamella/cialambella) — a Corsican reed instrument, more recently with a wooden box body
Graïle (graile) — a vertical wooden oboe (shawm) from Occitania
Pirula — a Corsican reed recorder

Bagpipes

Binioù kozh — a Breton bagpipe
Bodega — an Occitan bagpipe
Boha — a bagpipe from Landes of Gascony in Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Bousine — a small, droneless bagpipe from Normandy^[2]
Cabrette — a bagpipe from Auvergne in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
Caramusa — a Corsican bagpipe made of wood, leather and reed
Chabrette — a bagpipe from Limousin in Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Cornemuse du Centre — a bagpipe from Central France
Loure — an ancient bagpipe from Normandy

Horns

Pifana (also pivana) — a type of Corsican gemshorn generally made from a goat horn

Other instruments

Boîte à musique — an automatic musical instrument in a box that produces musical notes by using a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc to pluck the tuned teeth (or lamellae) of a steel comb.
Orgue de barbarie (also orgue à manivelle) — a mechanical musical instrument from the Alsace region of Grand Est consisting of bellows and one or more ranks of pipes housed in a case, usually of wood, and often highly decorated.^[3]
Orgue de danse — a mechanical organ from Paris, Île-de-France designed to be used in dance halls or ballrooms.
Orgue de rue — an automatic mechanical pneumatic organ from Paris, Île-de-France designed to be mobile enough to play its music in the street.
Limonaire — a pneumatic musical organ from Paris, Île-de-France covering the wind and percussive sections of an orchestra.^[4]^[5]^[6]
Pyrophone — a musical instrument in which notes are sounded by explosions, or similar forms of rapid combustion, rapid heating, or the like, such as burners in cylindrical glass tubes, creating light and sound.
Ralé-poussé — a Réunionnaise accordion
Riberbula — a jaw harp used by the Corsican people
Serinette — a mechanical musical instrument from the Lorraine region of Grand Est
Urganettu — a Corsican diatonic accordion

References

^ Méthode d'épinette par Christophe Toussaint. Édition princeps 2004. 2ème édition 2007.
^ Les architectes odinistes des cathédrales. Les chanoinesses et les évêques odinistes dans les diocèses saxons-normands, Fascicules de I à VII, de Maurice Erwin Guignard, à Bonneval & Chartres.
^ Ord-Hume, Arthur W. J. G. (1978). Barrel Organ: The Story of the Mechanical Organ and Its Repair. London: Allen & Unwin. p. 52. ISBN 978-0-04-789005-5.
^ Stadler, Andrea (January 2006). "Limonaire Frères Paris, 1839 — 1936" (PDF). Carousel Organ (26).
^ "Les frères LIMONAIRE".
^ "La petite musique des orgues Odin". 13 May 2015.

[1] Méthode d'épinette par Christophe Toussaint. Édition princeps 2004. 2ème édition 2007.

[2] Les architectes odinistes des cathédrales. Les chanoinesses et les évêques odinistes dans les diocèses saxons-normands, Fascicules de I à VII, de Maurice Erwin Guignard, à Bonneval & Chartres.

[3] Ord-Hume, Arthur W. J. G. (1978). Barrel Organ: The Story of the Mechanical Organ and Its Repair. London: Allen & Unwin. p. 52. ISBN 978-0-04-789005-5.

[4] Stadler, Andrea (January 2006). "Limonaire Frères Paris, 1839 — 1936" (PDF). Carousel Organ (26).

[5] "Les frères LIMONAIRE".

[6] "La petite musique des orgues Odin". 13 May 2015.

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