Flutes & Wind
Everything here is played with breath, and everything here is decided by one number.
With a bansuri, the pitch is the instrument. There are no keys and no reed. A bansuri is a single piece of seasoned bamboo with six or seven holes, and its length fixes its scale permanently. A long bass flute breathes slow alap; a short high flute dances through folk tunes. You are not buying an instrument that can play in any key. You are buying a key.
That is why roughly half the messages we get about flutes are some version of "which scale should I buy", and it is a question we are glad to answer. If you have a teacher, ask them first and their answer wins. If you do not, the usual recommendation is a middle scale, E natural medium or G natural: long enough to give a real tone, short enough that your fingers reach comfortably. Message us on WhatsApp and tell us what you want to play.
What else is here
The shehnai is North India's ceremonial oboe, the sound of wedding gates and temple doorways, and the instrument Ustad Bismillah Khan carried onto the concert stage. We will be straight with you: the double reed makes it genuinely hard, and the first weeks are about producing a clean note at all.
The morchang is the jaw harp of Rajasthan, forged iron, played against the teeth with your mouth as the resonator. It is the least expensive real instrument we sell and the easiest thing here to carry.
The chimta is the fire-tong percussion of Punjabi devotional and folk music, and the ghatam is Carnatic music's fired clay pot, a genuine percussion instrument that happens to be shaped like a water vessel.
Care, because bamboo is a plant
Keep a bansuri out of direct sun and away from sudden dryness, oil it lightly and occasionally, and let it dry after long playing. Bamboo cracks from climate shock, not from use. A flute that travels from a Delhi workshop to a Chicago winter deserves a week of acclimatising before you judge it.
