HN geek checking in to namedrop my own project (sorry it's not Rust + RISC-V!)...
Autumn Equinox are a three-piece of hurdy-gurdy (the "wheel fiddle"), nyckelharpa (the Swedish "keyed fiddle"), and upright bass. We play tunes from and inspired by Celtic and Eastern European traditions, and the hypnotic drone of the hurdy-gurdy is a common thread. We often play tunes by other hurdy-gurdy composers like Andrey Vinogradov and Nigel Eaton as well.
It appears to be a sort of polyphonic hurdy-gurdy: one tuned string per key, and depressing the key engages that string with the wheel-bow. The wheel appears powered by electricity, and the foot pedals appear to either control the pressure or speed of the wheel-bow.
In contrast, the hurdy-gurdy's (and nyckelharpa's) keys shorten its melody string to increase the pitch, like fretting a violin or guitar. The wheel is manually cranked, and the rhythm of the cranking is used to adjust tone and engage the buzzing of the trompette. The HG is monophonic in that you can't dynamically play chords, though you can engage multiple melody strings simultaneously (usually octaves or fifths).
While the hurdy gurdy enthusiast are here, I'd like to share something I've been working on that has a lot of inspiration from hurdy gurdy droning... The Electroduochord. It has 2 strings, with a humbucker pickup for each string, and is played by controlling the speed of a rotary magnetic bow, that has an arrangement of magnets that manipulate the overtones of the vibrating strings. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28349487
and the latest version... https://www.flickr.com/photos/duchamp/52017939884/
For the folks down voting the parent post: Charles Babbage spent a considerable portion of his later life railing against street musicians. Street musicians, at the time, ran a sort of extortion scheme. They'd show up in the early morning hours outside your house and play loudly until you paid them to go away. So Babbage worked to try to pass legislation to ban street music (don't remember off the top of my head if he was successful).
And hurdy gurdies were a popular instrument for street musicians in Babbage's day.
The Nerdy Gurdy is a laser CNC and 3D-printed hurdy-gurdy kit (and now also nyckelharpa kit) sold by Jaap Brand. It's the least inexpensive real hurdy-gurdy you're likely to find, and better than many cheap hurdy-gurdies.
For those curious about something closer to the real thing, here's a laser-cut / 3D printed gurdy that actually works: https://www.nerdygurdy.nl/
And here's a MIDI one: https://midi.org/component/zoo/item/the-digi-gurdy-a-midi-hu...
And finally here's a really great hurdy gurdy player, see the rest of his videos for more super tunes and playing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8gohQvUuCs