The power of Facebook

On Wednesday I went to see A Hawk and a Hacksaw - that's a band not a pub. Hailing from New Mexico, they played Eastern-European-inspired folk on violin, accordion, tuba, guitar, and... one second... what is that? A violin? A trumpet? A horn? More penetrating in tone, coarser in sound, more intriguing in design than your regular violin with a wooden body, this odd instrument had everyone in the audience guessing. I put out a Facebook plea: does anyone know what you call a violin crossed with a trumpet? The replies came flooding in: a violet; a trumpolin. Then a YouTube link to a man playing one on a Belgian street. I was getting somewhere. Accounts of people seeing them in Venice and Paris followed. Then the genuine name: the stroh violin. And an offer to buy one and bring it back to Bristol. Watch this space. I might have a new hobby.

ps For the curious: the stroh violin was designed in 1889 by one Johannes Matthias Augustus Stroh. In place of the wooden body of the violin, which resonates to produce the sound,there's a metal resonator and amplifier - the trumpet or horn part of the violin - to do this job.