Instruments of Bellydance Music

Wind instruments:
Ney, the Arabic flute
Zurna
Oboe

String instruments:
Oud, Arabic lute
Guitar
Rabbaba
Violin

Percussion instruments:
Darbuka, Bandir (Bendir), Daf -drums and tambourine-like instruments
Qanun
Piano

Essay on Arabic instruments.

Many of the instruments used today are direct descendants of those ancient instruments seen in archeological remnants of the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Sumerians.

The artists of these empires depicted musicians and their instruments in the wall paintings and carvings of temples, palaces, and tombs.



Ancient Egyptian Instruments

Ancient Sumerian Instruments: reed pipes, vertical flutes, lyres, harps, kitharas, drums, clappers, sistrum (frame with rattling cross-bars)

Babylonians added oboes and lutes. -Music in the Ancient World

Zills are metal finger cymbals and are commonly played by performing belly dancers. Different metals produce somewhat different tones. Castanets are familiar to to those who listen to Flamenco music. Usually wooden, they are clappers which can produce a loud and rapid clacking sounds to the music.

"Castanets are percussion instrument (idiophone), used in Moorish, Ottoman, ancient Roman, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin American music, and Irish Folk Music." "In the late Ottoman empire, köçeks not only danced but played percussion instruments, especially a type of castanet known as the çarpare, which in later times were replaced by metal cymbals called zills." - [1]