A friend of mine went to Hawaii several months ago and found a strange wind instrument in one of the shops there. Since I like playing whistles and NAF’s he thought I might like having something else a little more exotic to add to my collection. I can’t begin to explain it without pictures so here they are.
This is the top of it. It has six holes and seems to play well with about the same fingering as a whistle. It does not do well with half fingerings or cross fingerings.
It does use a similar method as the whistle or NAF to produce sound but the window is on bottom rather than on top.
There is a flat part on the bottom connecting to the window. A ring of some sort of natural fiber is fitted around the end of the instrument so that there is a gap between the ring and the body of the instrument at the flat part. This is where the air passes through. The end of the instrument is completely closed and looks very fibrous. I believe the body must either be made of a jointed hollow plant like bamboo or else a great dealof work was put into hollowing it out without breaking the back end.
This is how I have to hold it to play it. I blow into the bottom of the instrument with one lip against the back and one under the fibrous ring. It requires very little back pressure. I can get about an octave and a half out of it before the notes break too far from whatever scale it’s tuned to to be recognizable.
I have never seen another instrument quite like this, although it seems fairly similar in principle to other instruments I’m used to. Has anybody seen these or something like them before?