Music of Himachal Pradesh

Himachal Pradesh folk music features a wide variety of drums, including dammama, damanght, gajju, doru, dhaunsa, nagara, dholku, nagarth, tamaka, dafale, dhol, dolki and hudak. Non-drum percussion instruments include the ghanta and ghariyal (gongs), chimta (tongs),^[1] manjira and jhanjh (cymbals), ghungru (bells), thali (platter) and kokatha murchang.

There are also wind instruments like algoja/algoza (twin flutes), peepni, shehnai (oboe), bishudi (flute), karnal (straight brass trumpet) and ranasingha (curved brass trumpet).

String instruments include gramyang, riwana (a small fretless lute), sarangi (bowed lute), jumang, ruman, ektara and kindari davatra.

Mohit Chauhan's 'morni', Karnail Rana's various folk songs, Dheeraj's love songs and Thakur Das Rathi's 'Naatis' has given great contribution to the music of Himachal Pradesh. New initiatives like Mountain Music Project and Laman are giving Himachali folk a contemporary sound. Others like Som Dutt Battu, a Padma Shri awardee, popularised the folk music and vocal classical music of Himachal Pradesh.^[2][3]

Some of the recent theatre and music personalities like GS Chani and his son Gyan have documented the music of the ethnic communities of the Himalayas, including Himachal, and have created documentaries preserving the rich oral traditions with modern mix to reflect the many aspects of the life, the hardships, loneliness, cosmology, nature, love of the people living in the Himalayas. ^[4]

Kangana Ranaut, an Indian actress and politician, raised about the dying Himachal Pradesh music in the parliament. She said: "I would also like to add that the folk music of Himachal Pradesh, especially the tribal music from Spiti, Kinnaur and Bharmour, and their folk and art forms are also on the verge on extinction."^[5]