RAGANELLA: Italian musical instrument
https://worldhitz4u.blogspot.com/2014/02/raganella-italian-musical-instrument.html
The raganella is a percussion musical instrument that is
commonly played in the folk music of the Calabria in the southern Italy.
Technically, this musical instrument is a cog rattle, manufacturing a sound
that is enough of a croak to have derived the folk name of the musical
instrument from the Italian name of the common tree-frog.
The musical instrument is about the size of a sound box and
made up of a wooden frame into which are tightened 4 or 5 stiff but flexible
wooden tines fastened to one side of the instrument’s frame; the other ends of
the times are struck in rapid succession by a cog-wheel that is turned by a
crank handle mounted on the side of the instrument’s frame.
Musical instruments of this type resemble the old kind of
watchman’s rattle. A cog rattle up to 2 meters high, the musical instrument
have used in Spain, Portugal and the New World, specifically to summon
worshippers to church. Also they are used as an alarm signal and as a noise
generator at sports events. They are generally used to scare birds and animals,
and in a simpler form to amuse children.
