The 10 Best Ocarinas

The class of instruments to which the ocarina belongs is over 12,000 years old. Generally speaking, an ocarina is a small flute-like instrument, usually somewhat round in shape, with a mouthpiece or hole for air to enter through, and several smaller holes on its body through which air can flow out. The holes can be covered with one's fingers, allowing for the production of a variety of notes and chords.

Due to its relative simplicity, it is not entirely surprising that variations on the ocarina seem to have developed independently in many ancient cultures that had no contact with one another. The general category of instruments into which the ocarina falls is called "vessel flutes." A vessel flute is technically any container that produces sound when air or wind is blown across or inside of it. Remember when you first discovered that blowing air across the mouth of a glass bottle produces a sound? A glass bottle itself is technically a primitive form of a vessel flute.

The most notable vessel flutes from history that inform today's ocarinas include the Chinese xun and pre-Columbian Mesoamerican pendant models. More contemporary versions originate in Europe, hence the Italian name ocarina, which is applied widely and often retroactively to describe similar instruments from other cultures.

The Chinese xun has a 7,000-year history. It is typically egg-shaped and made of baked clay, ceramic, or hollowed bone. In addition to a hole at its tip which serves as a mouthpiece, it typically has at least three finger holes on its front and two for the thumbs on its back. Similar instruments were also developed in Korea and Japan.

Across the globe, ancient Mesoamerican societies developed their own takes on what is now called the ocarina. Some of these instruments were also worn on the body as pendants. The Incans, Aztecs, and Mayans typically formed these instruments out of clay and often fashioned them in the shapes of birds and animals. Ocarina-like instruments fashioned from gourds have also been recovered from archeological sites in Africa.

In Europe, proto-ocarinas called gemshorns have been fashioned from animal horns for centuries. The earliest examples were likely brought back to Europe from the exploratory missions to the Americas that began as early as the 1400s. However, there is evidence that ocarinas have existed on European soil for much longer than that, as one of the oldest known specimens was found in Kosovo . The neolithic-era stoneware instrument known as the Runik Ocarina is believed to date back nearly 8,000 years.

Ocarinas of varying styles had become popular children's toys in Europe by the 19th century. In 1853, a 17-year-old boy from a small town near Bologna named Giuseppe Donati fashioned his own version with 10 holes that could play a full scale of musical notes. This was the first model suitable for playing contemporary music, and so Donati's design became the industry standard. He also coined the term ocarina itself, which means "little goose" in Italian. His contributions have led many people to refer to Donati as the ocarina's inventor, despite the instrument's many thousands of years of history that predate him.