Traditional Music and Dance of Gilgit-Baltistan

Gilgit-Baltistan's traditional music is built around a small set of instruments that turn up across the region: the rubab, a lute related to instruments found across Central Asia, and a pair of hand-beaten drums called the damal and the dadang, usually played together to drive a dance. Layered over these are area-specific instruments and dance forms that differ between Hunza, Gilgit and Baltistan, most visible at spring festivals and weddings rather than as a staged show.

This guide covers the main instruments, the region's best-known dances, and where a visitor is actually likely to hear any of it.

The core instruments

• Rubab. A carved wooden lute, smaller than a guitar, plucked rather than bowed. It is considered the lead instrument in the region's folk music and was brought into the area from Central Asia.
• Damal and dadang. Paired hand-drums used to keep the beat for dancing. The damal, sometimes called damama, is played with two small sticks; the dadang is a larger cylindrical drum, both traditionally made with mulberry wood frames and stretched animal hide.
• Surnai. A reed wind instrument, loud and piercing, often paired with the drums at outdoor festivals and processions.
• Sitar and gabi (flute). Used more in some valleys than others; the gabi is a simple wooden flute heard in pastoral and shepherd songs.
• Regional additions in Baltistan, including instruments not common elsewhere in the north, reflecting Baltistan's closer cultural ties to Ladakh and Central Asia.

The main dance forms

Three dances recur across the region's festivals, each with its own costume and pace:

1. The old man dance, in which a group performs in deliberately old-fashioned dress and a slower, more theatrical style, often played for laughs.
2. The sword dance, danced solo or in pairs, with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other, timed to the damal and dadang.
3. A herding or "cowherd" dance, performed in traditional dress with a long stick, drawing on the region's pastoral life.

The steps and names for these vary by valley and language group (Shina, Burushaski, Wakhi and Balti communities each have their own terms), so what you see in a Hunza wedding party and what you see in Skardu will not look identical even when the underlying dance is related.

Where visitors actually see it

Live traditional music in Gilgit-Baltistan is mostly a community event, not a tourist performance, which makes timing your visit around it worth planning for if this interests you:

• The Shandur Polo Festival, held on the Shandur Pass polo ground each July, draws musicians and dancers from across Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan alongside the polo matches. It is the single most reliable place for a visitor to see traditional performance at scale.
• Navroz and spring festivals in March, marking the new year in Hunza, Nagar and Gilgit, include music and dance as part of the celebration.
• Harvest festivals in Baltistan, in autumn, bring out local music tied to the agricultural calendar.
• Weddings, the most common setting of all, though these are private family events. Guesthouse owners and drivers sometimes know of a wedding a visitor can be invited to watch from a respectful distance, but this should never be assumed or asked for as a right.

Our guide to festivals of Gilgit-Baltistan has full dates and locations for the region's main annual events, and our culture and traditions guide covers the wider social context these performances sit within.

What you won't find

Don't expect a nightly cultural show laid on for tourists in the way some destinations offer. Outside of festival season, live traditional music is something you might come across by chance, at a shop, a gathering or a roadside stop, rather than something you can book. A few hotels in Karimabad and Skardu occasionally host informal evenings with local musicians during peak season, but this depends entirely on who is available that week, not a fixed schedule.

Is it worth planning a trip around?

If seeing traditional music and dance matters to you specifically, plan your dates around the Shandur Polo Festival in July or a spring Navroz celebration, since these are the only fixed points where a performance is close to guaranteed. Outside those windows, treat any music you hear as a bonus rather than the plan itself, and put your itinerary's structure around the region's landscape and roads instead.

Frequently asked questions