Origins: “My family was musical, and we grew up playing country and bluegrass and folk music, and I was interested in taking apart instruments,” KiLin Reece says about growing up in Bonny Doon, ...

Silent warrior. Underdog. Middle voice. These are the generous words that describe the viola, the string instrument accustomed to the shadows, and to the relentless jokes. Violists rarely get a chance ...

At the heart of many of the world’s musical instruments is the same, simple component—a string stretched tight between two points. Plucked, bowed, or struck, each of an instrument’s strings creates ...

Jeff Reider runs the cello bow slowly over a clean-burning flame, fine hairs from a Mongolian stallion cinching together in a taught line under his watchful eye. “There’s a fine line between cinching ...

Perumpanattrupadai, a Sangam work by Kadiyalur Uruttirankannanar, narrates a scene in which a shepherd (Idayan) plays a bow-shaped instrument, made of the branches of Kumizh, known as Gmelina asiatica ...