Twenty-seven years ago, in search of a hurdy-gurdy master, Donald Heller wandered into a music shop in Budapest. There, he saw a beautiful maiden, an ancient-looking stringed instrument in her lap, ...

Today's Beautiful Music is an introduction to the hurdy-gurdy. The unusual string instrument is played with a hand crank, and its ancestor -- the organistrum -- dates back at least to the 12th century ...

Movies benefit from Oscar exposure--and so do weird instruments. In the week after Sting played a hurdy-gurdy (a wooden stringed instrument with a keyboard and a crank that turns a wheel that acts as ...

Donovan is a Scottish singer-songwriter known for his unique blend of folk, pop, and psychedelic music. He rose to fame in the 1960s with songs that blended folk and a hint of rock. Known for his ...

Members of Led Zeppelin helped create Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” in the studio. The tune paved the way for a lot of the band’s later work. Donovan himself argued that Jimmy Page’s contributions to ...

The Hurdy-Gurdy continues to worm its way into pole position as the hacker’s instrument. How else could you explain a medieval wheel fiddle being turned into a synthesizer? Move over, keytar — [Rory ...

Ask Idahoans today what a hurdy-gurdy is, and most will have no idea. A few will probably know that a hurdy-gurdy was a kind of hand-cranked musical instrument popular in the 19th century. But if you ...

The hurdy-gurdy is one of Europe's oldest musical instruments. A kind of mechanical violin, it uses keys and a crank, along with melody and drone strings. Some call it the medieval synthesizer, and a ...