Horn (instrument) a mixture of the two, is called a horn section in these contexts. Variations include: As the name indicates, people originally used to blow on the actual horns of animals before starting to emulate them in metal or other materials. This original usage survives in the shofar (), a ram's horn, which plays an important role in Jewish religious rituals. The genus of animal-horn instruments to which the shofar belongs is called ("keren") in Hebrew, "qarnu" in Akkadian, and ("keras") in Greek. The "olifant" or "oliphant" (an abbreviation of the French "cor d'olifant"/"oliphant", "elephant horn") was the name applied in
Yu (wind instrument) Yu (wind instrument) The Yu (竽; pinyin: yú) was a free reed wind instrument used in ancient China. It was similar to the sheng, with multiple bamboo pipes fixed in a wind chest which may have been made of bamboo, wood, or a gourd. Each pipe contained a free reed, which was also made of bamboo. Whereas the sheng was used to provide simultaneous tones in harmony (in fourths and fifths), the "yu" was played in single lines melodically. The instrument was used, often in large numbers, in court orchestras of ancient China (and was also exported to Korea and