page_title: Moondog
section_title: Inventions
hierarchical_section_title: Moondog / Inventions
caption_attribution_description: English: The trimba, Moondog percussion instrument
context_page_description: Louis Thomas Hardin, also known as Moondog, was an American musician, composer, theoretician, poet and inventor of several musical instruments. He was blind from the age of 16.
  Hardin lived in New York City from the late 1940s until 1972, and during this time he could often be found on 6th Avenue, between 52nd and 55th Streets, wearing a cloak and a horned helmet sometimes busking or selling music, but often just standing silently on the sidewalk. He was widely recognized as "the Viking of 6th Avenue" by thousands of passersby and residents who were not aware of his musical career.
context_section_description: Moondog also invented several musical instruments, including a small triangular-shaped harp known as the "oo", another which he named the "ooo-ya-tsu", and a triangular stringed instrument played with a bow that he called the "hüs" (after the Norwegian, "hus", meaning "house"). Perhaps his best known creation is the "trimba", a triangular percussion instrument that the composer invented in the late 1940s. The original Trimba is still played today by Moondog's friend Stefan Lakatos, a Swedish percussionist, to whom Moondog also explained the methods for building such an instrument.
caption: The trimba, Moondog percussion instrument
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