Ektara Bengali: Bangladesh musical instrument

The ektara Bengali: একতারা, Punjabi: ਇਕ ਤਾਰਾ; literally "one-string" can also be called iktar, ektar, yaktaro gopichand. It is a one string musical instrument that is mostly used in traditional music from Bangladesh, India, Egypt and Pakistan.

source of picture: www.gandharvaloka.co.nz

In origin, the ektara was a string instrument of no-destination travelling bards and the minstrels from India and it is plucked with one finger. The musical instrument possesses a stretched single string with an animal skin over the head and a pole neck or split bamboo cane neck. Pressing the two halves of the neck together loosens the string of the instrument and as such lowering the pitch. The modulation of the tone with each small flexing of the neck gives the musical instrument its different sound. The pressure is adjusted by ear because there are no markings or measurements that will help indicate what pressure will produce what note. The various sizes of the ektara are tenor, soprano and bass. The bass ektara that can also be called the dotara usually has two strings.

These musical instruments are most commonly used in kirtan chanting which is the Hindu devotional practice of singing the divine names and mantras in an intense delight call and response way. The dotara has been made appealing to the general public of the United States by devotional Kirtan wallahs like the Western sadhu Bhagavan Das, a kirtan recording artist and the author of ‘Its here now, are you?’ A well-known ektara of the Bengali is carved out of a half of a dried gourd shell and serves as the sound box with a metal string running right through a middle of the instrument’s shell. At the top of the instrument, the string is tied on to a knob which slightly changes the tension of the string as well as the tuning-the knob and the string-tension are stabilized by two bamboos-strips that are tied on to the opposite sides of the gourd shell. The playing style of this musical instrument is a gradual pluck and gong that is matching the rhythm of the music. In the recent days, the ektara as a musical instrument is most widely used by folk music singers especially by Sufi singers in Punjab and Sindh.