The history of the ocarina

What happened when?

The dates below are the ones each source gives. Where sources disagree, the sections after the table say so. Where we quote an Italian or Japanese page, the translation is ours.

How old is the ocarina?

Hollow clay flutes are thousands of years old and turned up in many places, so there is no single first ocarina. The ocarina is a European example of the globular flute, a form found in many ancient and modern cultures. Pure Ocarinas says such instruments were "probably discovered independently throughout human history". The oldest one we found a source for is Chinese.

What is the xun?

The xun is a Chinese pottery flute, and one of the oldest known Chinese instruments. In its most common form it is egg-shaped with five finger holes: three on the front and two thumb holes on the back. Its range is about an octave. You blow across a hole at the top, not into a windway, so it plays differently from an ocarina.

The earliest surviving xun is from the Hemudu site in Zhejiang. It dates to about 5000 BC, roughly 7,000 years ago, and has only its blowing hole. Later xun from the Xia and Shang dynasties were often shaped like fish or fruit, with two to five finger holes.

The Met holds a xun from the Han dynasty, 206 BCE to 220 CE. It says simple clay whistles like it were among the earliest wind instruments that needed an understanding of how chamber size and finger-hole placement set the pitch. The xun had fallen out of use by 1900 and was revived in the last decades of the 20th century. Modern xun are often nine-hole.

Did the ancient Americas have ocarinas?

Yes, in many shapes. The most common ancient Mesoamerican ocarina was a small four-hole bird shape, called huilacapitztli in Nahuatl, Mexicolore says. Citing the scholars Stevenson and Martí, it adds that even a four-hole one could sound up to 16 or 18 pitches. It also says some from Greater Nicoya go back to about 500 BCE.

The Nahuatl name is Aztec, yet Mexicolore says that "there is little evidence of ocarina playing at all among the Mexica". Far more comes from the Gulf of Mexico, the Classic Maya and Central America.

South America has them too. The Met holds a Paracas ocarina from the Ica Valley of Peru, ceramic, from the 5th to 3rd century BCE. It also holds a Tairona ocarina from Colombia, made between 1300 and 1500, and a Guanacaste-Nicoya ocarina from Costa Rica, from the 9th to 12th century. Little is known about how the surviving pre-conquest instruments of Central and South America were used.

Who invented the modern ocarina?

Giuseppe Donati of Budrio gets the credit for the modern ocarina. Budrio is a town close to Bologna. Budrio's museum page says the ocarina "was born almost by chance in 1853", out of a musical joke Donati played on his friends.

Other sources give other years. The Horniman Museum says around 1860, the New York Times the 1860s and Treccani about 1867. We found no document from the year itself, so read 1853 as Budrio's own dating.

Donati was born on 2 December 1836 and died in 1925, the Horniman Museum records. A 1909 interview with him puts the invention at age seventeen, which fits 1853. It says the fairs of his day sold clay "ocarine" with a beak and a tail and four holes in the sides. They could play an easy tune within an octave.

In the interview, he was shaping a clay object like a small cornet when it broke. The piece that survived showed him the shape, and he then pierced holes for all ten fingers. Such an ocarina usually has eight finger holes and two thumbholes.

His idea was a family of ocarinas. Budrio's museum says he built them in different sizes, so that together they would cover a range of notes equal to the piano's. The 1909 interview counts five sizes. The name is the Bolognese dialect word for "little goose" (Budrio's own archive).

How did the ocarina spread from Budrio?

Through a band. Budrio's museum counts its ocarina groups "since 1865". The first group began with five players and grew to seven, Pure Ocarinas says. By the 1909 interview's account, it moved from dance music to opera, playing the Miserere from Il Trovatore.

The group's own history says it toured Europe as "the famous mountaineers of the Apennines". It quotes a review of a concert at the Crystal Palace from London's Daily News of 13 July 1874. We could not find the original review.

Makers followed. The two Mezzetti brothers started making ocarinas in Paris in 1870. Alberto Mezzetti later opened a workshop in London, and Budrio's museum shows his Liberty-style decorated ocarinas with a metal plunger. Vicinelli invented moulds for making ocarinas in series in 1878.

The Met has a Budrio ocarina that came to its collection in 1889. Other makers copied the design and added things like tuning plungers.

Budrio still makes them: its museum shows the nine ocarinas Fabio Menaglio makes today. When we checked on 14 November 2026, the museum was open on the third Sunday of each month. The town holds an International Ocarina Festival every two years.

"Sweet potato" is another name for the ocarina. In the 1930s, sweet potatoes of different sizes were played in harmony in American popular music.

Where did the 12-hole and the pendant come from?

The 12-hole was developed in Asia in the 20th century. It keeps the 10-hole fingering and adds two small holes and a bigger chamber, which extend the range down by three semitones. Pure Ocarinas says it is now the most commonly available transverse, because the design is so popular in Asia. Our types guide explains what the extra holes do.

Pendants are younger. They were developed in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, to play an octave on four holes. Wikipedia credits the English mathematician John Taylor with devising, in 1964, a fingering that plays a full chromatic octave on four holes.

We found no primary source for that year. A 2015 conference paper repeats it but cites Wikipedia, so read it as a credit, not an established date. We also found no source for who built the first double or triple ocarina, so we name no one.

Why is the ocarina popular in Japan?

Pure Ocarinas says ocarinas reached Japan around the 1930s and were first made there by Takashi Aketagawa. The sculptor was born in Niigata in 1909. His museum's timeline dates it earlier. It says he saw a bass ocarina at the Matsuya department store in Ginza in 1928 and decided to make them.

The timeline says he completed a fully chromatic 12-hole ocarina in 1948, and calls it a world first. That is the museum's claim for its own founder. Italian Wikipedia gives 1928 for the 12-hole itself. We follow the museum, which dates each step.

Then came a TV score. Pure Ocarinas says the ocarina became popular in Japan when a player called Sojiro performed on it in the documentary "Great Yellow River". OTOTOY's album notes say the unknown newcomer was picked from over 60 candidates to score NHK's ten-month China co-production. Japanese Wikipedia dates it to 1986.

How did the Zelda games make the ocarina famous?

Ocarina of Time came out for the Nintendo 64 in November 1998 (Wikipedia). Its soundtrack is by the series composer Koji Kondo. In the game you play songs on an ocarina with the controller, and some players wanted a real one.

On 15 February 1999 the New York Times reported on Anita Feng, who had made ceramic ocarinas in Issaquah, Washington for 25 years. Her business, the paper said, had more than doubled since the game's release, to about 60 handmade instruments a month. About three-quarters of it was from people who played the game.

The same article is more guarded about wood. A seller of wooden ocarinas, Charlie Hind, told it he saw only a limited increase. The reporter adds that some buyers scoffed at his ocarinas because they were wood, not ceramic. That is one newspaper and two makers, the only measure of the boom we found.

Nintendo released a remake for the Switch 2 on 5 November 2026. Its store page showed it as available now when we checked on 14 November 2026. Our post on the remake and the real ocarina covers which instrument to buy for it.

Which part of this history is my ocarina from?

A 10-hole follows Donati's design, a 12-hole the Japanese one, and a 4 or 6-hole pendant the British one. A double or triple joins smaller chambers to a first chamber that plays like a single-chamber ocarina.

Our fingering charts cover the 12-hole, 6-hole and 4-hole. If you are not sure of the key, the tuner's test of your whole ocarina names it from one note, once you tell it how many holes the ocarina has.

For what each kind is like to play, read the types guide. For how an ocarina works, see what is an ocarina. To buy one, read the buying guide.