UCLA's ethnomusicology program houses an outstanding collection of musical instruments from many areas of the non-Western world. Certainly one of the largest university-owned collections in existence, it contains examples from such diverse geographical and cultural regions as North and South India; the Indonesian traditions of Bali, Java, Sunda, and Badui; the major classical ensembles of Thailand; folk instruments from Burma and Vietnam; and the traditions of China, Japan and Korea. Others represented in the collection include Tibet, the Philippines, Mexico, Chile, Bolivia, Ethiopia, West Africa, (Ghana, Mali, Senegal), Persia and other areas of the Near East, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Russia, and American Indian.

One of the collection's most stunning attraction is the Javanese gamelan, Khjai Mendung - the Venerable Dark Cloud. It is a fine orchestral set consisting of over 60 pieces. Most of the other more than one thousand instruments in the collection were acquired in the 1950s and early 1960s thanks to the prodigious energy and organizational skill of one of the founders of the former Ethnomusicology Institute, Emeritus Professor Mantle Hood.