The ''tro Khmer'' () is a traditional bowed

string instrument In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners. Musicians play some ...

from

Cambodia Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline ...

. Its body is made from a special type of

coconut The coconut tree (''Cocos nucifera'') is a member of the palm tree family (biology), family (Arecaceae) and the only living species of the genus ''Cocos''. The term "coconut" (or the archaic "cocoanut") can refer to the whole coconut palm, ...

covered on one end with snake skin, and it has three strings. Instruments are not standardized, and coconuts vary in size; however the instrument's sound bowl may have dimensions 16.5 cm by 14 cm. In the past the strings were made of silk. By the 1960s, metal strings were in use, and the sound of the instrument changed, becoming sharper. The ''tro Khmer'' is closely related to a Thai instrument called '' saw sam sai''. The instrument may be related to the similarly shaped Indonesian version of the rebab, arriving there from Muslim culture, c. 15th century a.d. A difference between the two is the number of stings; where the Indonesian rebab has two strings, the tro Khmer has three.

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See also