Beyond Repair: Examining Brokenness in Musical Instruments

The suling is an end-blown flute from Indonesia, made from bamboo. Like the other instruments in the Javanese gamelan, sulings are tuned to one of two scales, sléndro or pélog.

In Japanese taiko drumming, wooden sticks called bachi are used to hit the head of the drum. Taiko drums come in various sizes ­­from the small, high-pitched shime-daiko, to the mid-sized chu-daiko, to the large, lower-pitched o-daiko, and each of these requires a different size of bachi.

About the instrument

The janggo, or janggu in folk styles, is a Korean drum, perhaps the most prominent of Korean percussion instruments. The body is carved into a hollow hourglass shape from a solid piece of paulownia wood, and stretched pieces of animal skin are fastened to metal hoops to form the heads on either side.

Musical instruments are designed to be played: to be hit, struck, blown, and handled by humans in a variety of ways. Over time, this repeated interaction in combination with environmental conditions can have a tangible effect. Just as with any physical object, an instrument’s material – whether wood, metal, animal skin, or other – wears down, weakens, and breaks over time. Sometimes these issues can be fixed, but in other cases the instrument is beyond repair.