Episode Details

The flute is too mainstream. If you want to truly short-circuit your in-laws' expectations, you need an instrument that has no pre-existing category in anyone's brain. From the crank-driven hurdy-gurdy to the haunted Swedish nyckelharpa, we rank five bizarre instruments that are weird enough to signal genuine eccentricity, acquirable without a million-dollar budget, and playable enough to produce recognizable music within a month. The performance is social theater — and the obscurity provides immunity from judgment. Mistakes don't read as mistakes; they read as the instrument being mysterious.