2020-08-19 Wed

Alghoza is a pair of fipple flutes, found through¬out northwest India and Pakistan. In the world of Alghoza playing, the two flute pipes are a couple. The longer one is the male and the shorter one the female instrument. With the use of beeswax, the instrument can be scaled to any tune.

It is an important instrument in Balochi, Sindhi, Punjabi and Rajasthani folk music. There are various approaches to the construction. Occasionally the two flutes are physically joined together, some¬times they are merely tied with a length of string, while some¬times they are completely separate. The number of holes varies as well. Occasionally one flute has 6-7 holes and plays all of the melody while the other flute is drilled in such a way that it can only play a drone. However another common approach has each flute with an identical arrangement of holes, such that both flutes have the ca¬pa¬city to play a melody. In this latter case, one generally is limited to playing only a portion of the octave. India Post released new set of 6 se-tenant commemorative postage stamps on “Musical instruments of wandering minstrel” on 25th June 2020. One of them features Alghoza. Image Source: colnect.com