Editor’s note: This tale comes from Mary Ellen Gilliland’s humorous local history, “Rascals, Scoundrels and No Goods.” The book captures the high-spirited antics of shysters and shady ladies, ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

An error has occurred. Please try again. With a The Portland Press Herald subscription, you can gift 5 articles each month. It looks like you do not have any active ...

It never hurts to iterate the phrase “Op-Ed” at the beginning of articles in this section. It may help us (in this case, I) remember that the writer is not an encyclopedia or – to be more current – ...

If Slipknot were to ever add a tenth member, we hope it's a hurdy-gurdy player. YouTuber Michalina Malisz has repurposed five of the band's riffs on the hand crank folk instrument and it actually ...

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 ...

We get a lot of Kickstarter pitches in our email, but this one is different. First of all, it’s over. No biggie there. Secondly, it’s a laser-cut hurdy gurdy. What’s a hurdy gurdy? It’s a musical ...