[Dixielandjazz] Re: Bass Cano - possibly an answer!

[david richoux]

Hi all,

I was just at an mid-day gig  in the town of Colma (just south of San 
Francisco) at an annual event celebrating the life of Joshua Norton 
(Emperor Norton the First) ( go to 
<http://www.discordia.org/~keeper/norton.html> or several other 
websites for more on that.. an interesting story!)

anyway, one of the people who was there is an expert in early Western 
Swing, Jug Bands and "Hill Billy Music" so I asked him if he knew what 
a "Bass Cano" is or was.

Not only did he know - he actually SAW one at  The Metropolitan Museum 
of Art a few years ago! He said it was a one string instrument about 5 
or 6 feet long - basically a big stick of wood with a very simple 
tuning peg at each end of the string. It was not displayed well and was 
there not much of a descriptive explanation but it was called a Bass 
Cano. He remembered it because he asked a curator about the instrument 
and they did not have any ready information.

I just went to the Met website to have a look 
<http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/department.asp?dep=18>  - it is 
not shown but there are a lot of very interesting instruments shown at 
that site.

On a slightly related note - while I was doing this web search I 
remembered a visit  to a museum of musical instruments in Barcelona - 
they had a single bowed string bass instrument called a "Trompa Marina" 
  that was from the Medieval time period (there are also 2 and 3 string 
versions that are used by Medieval Folk revival groups today.) The 
instrument has a long, narrow triangular wooden  body and a neck, 
tuning peg and scroll sort of like a modern string bass. I have a 
snapshot of the single string one that I could scan if anyone is 
interested.

Mystery Solved?

Dave Richoux