I recently purchased a new instrument. I found it here:
Here is an account of the incidents surrounding the purchase:
I was soon turned loose and was much more comfortable. Though I was to meet up with another high school friend, Travis shortly, I decided to check out a nearby music store since it was so close. It was one of my main objectives of the trip and I couldn’t wait. The place is called the Music Inn. It was filled with wonder. The shop was small, but was packed with more musical instruments than I would ever hope to find in one small room. There were baskets and shelves with beads and mallets and bells and other things that ring. The store had two aisles with a middle section that was made not of a shelf, but of hanging congas and sitars and horns and a violin here and a who-knows-what (!?) there. In the back was a workers bench and a number of ukuleles and lutes and guitars overhead, also hanging from the ceiling; in the front was a large, ancient silver register with a hand written sign the read “No Refunds” that had been taped there probably over a decade ago. My intent was to find and purchase a small stringed instrument, preferably something I had never seen before and that I could not identify by name. I found the very item hanging amongst a series of mismatched trumpets. It is a small long rounded neck thing that the worker told me was called a dulcimer banjo. It has three strings and an Eastern sound. The worker took it from my hands and places the shoestring strap over his neck. He then looked at me with a nodding head as he played a little diddy. “It’s a great little thing” he told me, as he handed it back.
Five minutes later, I was stopped on the street by an older black man standing with two friends near a street book sale. He pointed at the instrument that I was plucking and asked me what it was. I told him the name and I played a few notes of an improvised song that I continued as I carried on down that street in Manhattan.
Here is what Lena discovered.
