| Name | Image | Tradition | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lagerphone |  | Australia | In Australia, a lagerphone is a home-made musical instrument made of beer-bottle metal tops, loosely nailed to a stick, which jingle when hit or tapped. |
| Lambeg Drum |  | Ireland | A Lambeg drum is a large Irish drum, beaten with curved malacca canes. It is used primarily in Northern Ireland by Unionists and the Orange Order traditionally in street parades held in the summer, particularly on and around 12 July ("The Twelfth"). The weight of the drum means that it had been replaced with smaller replicas for most parades, but the full-sized instrument has started to reappear in recent years - usually on floats. |
| Langeleik |  | Norway | The langeleik is a traditional stringed musical instrument from Norway. The instrument has one melody string, like a monochord, but it has additional bourdon strings (or drone strings), usually 7 or 8 on modern instruments, but older ones had fewer, most often four bourdon strings. The frets under the melody string are placed such that it can only play a major scale. |
| Laouto |  | Greece | The laouto is a traditional stringed musical instrument from Greece. It began spreading in Rethymnon (the capital of Rethymno Prefecture in the island of Crete) after the 1930s. The laouto has four double sets of strings, which are tuned in fifths (Cc-Gg-Dd-aa ) starting from the bass. The role of the laouto in Greek traditional music is that of accompaniment, either providing the rhythmical values, or following the melody of the song. |
| Lap Steel Guitar |  | Hawaii | The lap steel guitar is a type of steel guitar. There are three main types of lap steel guitar: lap slide guitars, resonator guitars and electric lap steel guitars. The lap steel probably began in La'ie, Hawai'i in the late 1800s. Various people have been credited with the innovation. The instrument was hugely popular in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. |
| Launeddas |  | Italy | The launeddas, triple clarinet or triplepipe, is a typical Sardinian (the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea) woodwind instrument, consisting of three pipes. It is polyphonic and played using circular breathing. It is an ancient instrument, dating back to at least the 8th century BC. It is still played during religious ceremonies and dances (su ballu). |
| Lesiba |  | Basotho | The lesiba is a stringed-wind instrument, with a quill attached to a long string acting as the main source of vibration. The quill is blown across, creating vibration in the string, usually in short notes on a small, limited scale. The lesiba's construction is unique, in that it is the only instrument in use today that is a stringed wind instrument. The lesiba is the national instrument of the Basotho, a southern African people, now located primarily in South Africa and Lesotho. The image shows a close up of the quill portion of a lesiba. |
| Lion Drum |  | China | The size of a lion drum is very big, and is widely used for the Chinese lion dance during the New Year celebration. There are normally 2 types, the northern Lion drum and southern lion drum. It is a single-headed drum, and its large size helps to create a majestic, booming resonance upon striking of the drum head. The lion drum head is made of thick, durable goat skin, and its wooden body is normally decorated with intricate hand-drawn drawings. |
| Lira |  | Ukraine | The lira, or relia, (Ukrainian: ліра) is a variant of the hurdy-gurdy, an instrument which can trace its history back to the 10th century. It is thought that the lira was introduced into Ukraine in the 17th century by Cossacks who had fought in France as mercenary soldiers. It was used as an instrument to accompany religious psalms, kants and epic ballads performed by itinerant blind musicians called lirnyky. The traditional lira has three strings, one on which the melody is played with the aid of a special keyboard, the other two producing a drone of a fifth. The sound is produced by a wooden wheel which is rotated by a crank held in the right hand. This wheel rubs against the strings, setting them into vibration like a bow on a violin. |
| Lithophone |  | United States | A lithophone is a musical instrument consisting of a plurality of rocks or pieces of rock, in which musical notes are sounded by striking one or more of the rocks in combination (harmony) or succession (melody). One of the most celebrated examples of a lithophone is The Great Stalacpipe Organ of Luray Caverns (see image), Virginia, USA, which uses 37 stalactites to produce the tones of the Western scale. |
| Liuqin |  | China | The liuqin (柳琴) is a four-stringed Chinese lute with a pear-shaped body. It is small in size, almost a miniature copy of another Chinese plucked instrument, the pipa. But the range of its voice is much higher than the pipa, and has its own special place in the Chinese music, whether in orchestral music or in solo pieces. |
| Luo |  | China | The luo, or Chinese gong, is made of high-tin bronze. Its central resonating area can be either flat or convex. Its long history can be traced back to the early Western Han period (206 BC-AD 24) according to an archaeological find from a tomb of that period in Guangxi. There are many varieties of gongs, each with varying tone qualities. The name is usually preceded by a prefix to specify each different kind. The largest type (over 120 cm in diameter) called dachaoluo, known for its deep and grave tone, is used in official settings like weddings, funerals and temple ceremonies. The smallest, the goujiaoluo (狗叫锣, lit. dog-calling gong), only 8 cm in diameter, can often be seen in theatrical ensembles in the southern parts of Fujian. Both the larger and the smaller boast distinct acoustic features, functions and performing styles. The image shows the large gong used in the Nakhi (Naxi) Orchestra of China. |
| Lusheng |  | China | The lusheng (蘆笙) is a polyphonic instrument with multiple bamboo pipes from China. Each fitted with a free reed, which are fitted into a long blowing tube made of hardwood. It has five or six pipes of different pitches. It comes in sizes ranging from very small to several meters in length. The lusheng is used primarily in the rural regions of southwestern China and in nearby countries such as Laos and Vietnam, where it is played by such ethnic groups as the Dong and Miao. Performers often dance or swing the instrument from side to side while playing. |
| Lute |  | Europe | Lute can generally refer to any plucked string instrument with a neck (either fretted or unfretted) and a deep round back, or a specific instrument from the family of European lutes. The European lute and the Near-Eastern oud both descend from a common ancestor, with diverging evolutionary paths. The lute is used in a great variety of instrumental music from the early renaissance to the late baroque eras. It is also an accompanying instrument, especially in vocal works, often realizing a basso continuo or playing a written-out accompaniment. The image shows a renaissance lute. |
| Lyre |  | Greece | The lyre is a stringed musical instrument well known for its use in Classical Antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greeks were accompanied by lyre playing. The lyre of Classical Antiquity was ordinarily played by being strummed with a plectrum, like a guitar or a zither, rather than being plucked, like a harp. The fingers of the free hand silenced the unwanted strings in the chord. |
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