Messiah Community Radio Talk Show

The Xaphoon is a pocket sax made by Brian Wittman, a Maui resident who invented the instrument more than 32 years ago. This extremely durable instrument is ideal for classrooms, students on a budget, and anyone who might be subjecting the instrument to rough conditions. "I have made over 15,000 such instruments in the past 20 years, all because of a single instrument I made on the whim of a child. The young lad lived with his mother in a tent in the woods, and heard me playing the sax (the expensive metal variety). He approached respectfully and then boldly asked if perhaps I had a little one he could play. Why not? I fiddled around and whittled a small end-blown block flute out of bamboo. Its tone was wheezy and small, and satisfied neither of us. I had a small grinding wheel I was using to shape some wooden boat cleats, and in sudden inspiration I applied the flute to the wheel and ground off the whole corner of the mouthpiece at an angle, re-shaping it to take a sax reed. With a bit of string holding th