The algoza (also called the jori, “the pair”) is two flutes played simultaneously: one sings, one holds the drone. The astonishing part is the breath. The player uses circular breathing — inhaling through the nose while the cheeks keep pushing air out — so the sound never stops, not between phrases, not between verses. A good algoza player is a bagpipe with no bag.
It is a herdsman's instrument by origin, deeply rooted in west Punjab and Sindh and shared across the Punjab–Sindh–Rajasthan belt — the property of no single community, which is true of most things on these pages. From the grazing grounds it moved to the folk stage, where it accompanies dhola and the long narrative songs that need a sound as unbroken as the story.
How circular breathing works — inhale through the nose, squeeze the cheek-reservoir, never let the column of air fall — deserves a diagram, and will get an animated one in a future update of this page.
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Sources & a note on images and audio
- Reference material on Punjabi and Sikh musical instruments, including — where relevant above — the explicit scholarly notes on contested attributions. Instrument-origin claims are labelled with their confidence throughout.
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