September 25, 2017

Wandering in the MIM

I went to the Musical Instrument Museum in AZ earlier this summer. After 4 hours, I was dragged out by my hair. Mostly, I wandered about, happily drooling on the pretty instruments, listening to the musical clips and noticing odd little relations between different instruments/music/dance from wildly different areas (compare hula and flamenco dancing sometime!) But I also had fun taking a few pics. Sadly, the flutes usually don't have much information included in their display (a common symptom of string instruments getting more respect than winds) but there is still a wonderful range of flutes; end-blown, rim-blown, vessel, transverse, block and duct types and more. I did not even attempt to take pictures of all of them since that would have been too distracting from the thinking and dreaming I was doing. Nor did I take pics of only flutes.
Here are a few to share.
Enjoy.
Drum Skirt Honoring Yemaja


A Few South American Flutes

Flute from the Andes
















Extremely Tall Drums

African Flutes and Whistles-Worn as status symbols
Flutes and whistles from the Balkans

Animal Shaped Whistles

Spanish Chiflo (duct flute) and Salterio (string drum)







Welsh Crwth