ocarina

Clay bird shaped ocarina.

Central America is an ancient home of the ocarina, where it has been crafted and played for more than 4,500 years. Ocarinas were an integral part of the musical traditions of cultures from Mexico through the Andes until European colonization. Ocarinas vary in size, shape and in the number of resonating chambers and finger holes. Although many ocarinas have one to three finger holes, some have six or more, and the smallest, whistle-like ocarinas have no holes at all. The pitch of the ocarina is determined by the size of the chamber and the size and depth of the finger holes.

Collection Information

These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.

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