The dranyen, “the sweet-sounding”, is the instrument of Tibetan song. It is a long-necked lute with a small body, six strings in three paired courses on most instruments, a fretless neck, and a pegbox that is very often carved as a horse’s head or a sea-monster. The body is carved from a single block of wood, and the belly is covered with skin, which gives the instrument its dry, quick, carrying voice. It is strummed and plucked with the right hand while the left stops the strings against the bare neck, and it accompanies the singer’s own voice, the nangma ensemble, and the dance.
It is played across the Tibetan world and beyond it: in Ladakh, in Sikkim, in Bhutan, where a larger cousin with a carved sea-monster head is the national instrument, and wherever Tibetans have settled. It is the first instrument a Tibetan child is likely to be handed, and it is the instrument Genla has chosen to write down.
What is here
The history of the instrument; how it is held, tuned and played; and the notation writer, the tool that lets a song be written rather than only remembered.