Hebrew Music Museum From my friend Esthermalka Fein
B"H
Chodesh Tov.
A beautiful artsy place to visit, is the new Hebrew Music Museum.com (has a website) in Jerusalem, on Yoel Salomon Street # 10 (where Ben Yehuda St. and Yaffo St. meet, behind bank Hapoalim.). A must see, with state of the art laptops for each visitor, to facilitate seeing the history of each piece in English or Hebrew, and hearing the sounds of the instruments on display.
Did you know that the Scottish bag pipe did not originate from Scotland, but from Persia around 1000 BC.? They used to use cow hide for the bag and reed pipes for the mouth pieces.
The name Zither, used for many kinds of string instruments, originated from the Greek word khitara, later used by the Spanish as in guitarra, in English guitar.
Come to think of it, the string instrument the Kinor, violin, the lyre and harp, originated from David Hamelech. (The Kineret lake is named so, because it is in the shape of a Kinor/harp)
One of my favorite instrument was the flute. Nice sound, easy to carry...music to shepherd the sheep, or us humans.
The clarinet (used in klezmer) is pleasant and lively.
One of the most unusual pieces I saw on display in the colorful and ornate Moroccan room, was a violin, but with a rectangular body, not made of wood, but instead, made of stretched camel skin.
There were also Yemenite musical devices, like the xylophone sounding Balafon. and African drums like the Djembo In fact, one can make a musical instrument, just by digging a deep hole in the ground and stretching and securing strings across the hole. (Some strings used to be made of silk, some, from metal and nowadays, also from nylon.)
African drums, like the Djembo, used for celebrations, were often used for assembling groups, for warnings or for sending other messages over long distances.
What would a Hebrew Music Museum be without a Shofar. There were plenty of those on display too.
In addition, there were some brass instruments. like the saxophone, trumpets and trombones, and.hundreds and hundreds of other miscellaneous musical devices as well
On the second floor, there was a virtual Beit Hamikdash, that one can visit with goggles and earphones; a 360 degree, three dimension journey through the Beith Hamikdash, viewing the Kohanim in action.
B'Ezrat Hashem, B'Shana Habaah B'Yerushalyim Habniya. NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM,
Shalom | 
