Sound healing

A hammered bronze disc, the largest of ours a metre across, struck with a felt mallet rather than a hard stick. A gong does not give you a note. It gives you a wash that keeps arriving after the strike, builds while you are still listening to it, and takes a long time to leave.

Gongs have been cast and played across China, Java, Bali and the Thai temples for centuries, for ceremony and for marking the hours. On the beach here they are set in a row facing the water, so the sound crosses the mats rather than pointing at them.

Two families sit side by side on the same rug. Himalayan bowls are hammered from bronze, never quite round, and no two of them have the same voice. Crystal bowls are ground from quartz and ring purer and far longer, one clean tone that just holds.

Both are played the same two ways: struck once on the rim, or walked round the rim with a leather wrapped stick until the material starts to hum on its own. Practitioners buy them by ear, one at a time, the way anyone builds an instrument collection.

An open tube, played by buzzing the lips into one end. The player breathes in through the nose while pushing air out of the cheeks, so the drone never stops for a breath and can run as long as they can hold the pattern.

The instrument belongs to the Aboriginal peoples of northern Australia, where it is cut from eucalyptus hollowed out by termites and carries names of its own, yidaki among them. The ones played here are bamboo, which is what grows on this island.

Held close, it is felt as much as heard. Players often work it low along the floor, where the air moves.

Where the gongs and bowls hold the ground, a flute is the thing you can follow. Bamboo pipes, a bansuri, a Native American style flute: small ranges, breathy tone, and a player who has to stop and take a breath, which is why the melody sounds like a person rather than a machine.

It is usually the last instrument to come in and the one people remember, because it is the only one carrying a tune.