The duduk is a traditional woodwind instrument, popular with the people of Caucasus, Middle East and Eastern Europe. This English word is often used generically for a family of ethnic instruments including the doudouk or duduk (դուդուկ) (also tsiranapogh (ծիրանափող, literally "apricot horn") in Armenian, the düdük or mey in Turkey, the duduki in Georgia, the balaban (or düdük) in Azerbaijan, the narmeh-ney in Iran, the duduka or dudka in Russia and Ukraine, duduk in Macedonia and Serbia, and the douduk in Bulgaria. The word itself is ultimately derived from Turkish "düdük", likely of onomatopoeic origin. The word dudka in Slavic languages is a diminutive of duda and is of native Slavic origin; the similarity with Turkish düdük is a coincidence.

A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator (usually a tube), in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into (or over) a mouthpiece set at the end of the resonator. The pitch of the vibration is determined by the length of the tube and by manual modifications of the effective length of the vibrating column of air. In the case of some wind instruments, sound is produced by blowing through a reed; others require buzzing into a metal mouthpiece.

A musical instrument is constructed or used for the purpose of making the sounds of music. In principle, anything that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the beginnings of human culture. The academic study of musical instruments is called organology.

The date and origin of the first device of disputed status as a musical instrument dates back as far as 67,000 years old; artifacts commonly accepted to be early flutes date back as far as about 37,000 years old. However, most historians believe determining a specific time of musical instrument invention to be impossible due to the subjectivity of the definition.

Musical instruments developed independently in many populated regions of the world. However, contact among civilizations resulted in the rapid spread and adaptation of most instruments in places far from their origin. By the Middle Ages, instruments from Mesopotamia could be found in the Malay Archipelago and Europeans were playing instruments from North Africa. Development in the Americas occurred at a slower pace, but cultures of North, Central, and South America shared musical instruments.