The hurdy-gurdy is a stringed instrument dating back to the Medieval period. Its sound is produced by hand-cranking a rosined wheel that rubs against strings when turned. Its other strings act as drones to underpin the moving notes, as with the bagpipes. It is mostly used in Occitan, Aragonese, Cajun French, Asturian, Cantabrian, Galician, Hungarian, and Slavic folk music. It can also be seen in early music settings such as medieval, renaissance or baroque music.
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But now the Polish hurdy-gurdyist Michalina Malisz is reinventing the instrument on YouTube, blending its sounds with metal music, including riffs from Metallica, Slipknot and the Armenian-American metal band, System of a Down.
Generally thought to have originated from fiddles in either Europe or the Middle East (e.g., the rebab instrument) before the eleventh century A.D, the hurdy-gurdy was originally used as a church and then a court instrument. Its fame rose steadily over the next few centuries. In Hieronymus Bosch’s late-15th/early-16th-century Garden of Earthly Delights, an enormous hurdy-gurdy is depicted in a scene involving a musical score printed on a character’s buttocks. Then, sometime in the 19th century, it was relegated to the peripheries.
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In recent years, however, the hurdy-gurdy has enjoyed something of a revival, even appealing to musicians outside of the traditional folk scene. The Canadian alt-rock group Arcade Fire, for instance, has done a lot to popularise it.
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Malisz is the latest musician to succumb to its charms. A hurdy-gurdy player, lyricist, songwriter, producer, and singer, she also teaches the hurdy-gurdy and runs an online hurdy-gurdy shop: Ancestore.
To watch the video, see below. 