I've blogged about unusual musical instruments before (see links below) and the rather unusual Viennese Vegetable Orchestra. But as far as um, offbeat musical groups go, what's stranger than the Thai Elephant Orchestra? From a description of their CD from earthear.com:
This is, I believe, the first CD ever recorded of instrumental music featuring non-human players. It's a project of the Thai Elephant Conservation Center, a government facility in which domestic elephants are making the transition from forest workers to interspecies ambassadors. In keeping with the center's exploration of human-elephant interaction, a set of instruments were designed with the elephants' particular dexterity and strength in mind. The resulting music is uniquely fascinating. [continue]
Link found here at Metafilter.
Curious? Here are a bunch of related web pages:
Cellist and Elephants Make Heavy Music - Georgia Straight
Thai Elephant Orchestra - CBC Radio (Includes interview, recorded in Real Audio format.)
National Elephant Institute, Thailand
ChangThai.com
Thai Elephants on Parade -WNYC.org (Includes interview with sound samples, in Real Audio format.)
Jami Sieber's account of playing her cello with the elephant orchestra - JamiSieber.com
Thailand's musical elephants - BBC
Elephant articles from Mirabilis.ca
War elephants
Dungcams spy on elephants
Elephant polo
The Elephant's Child - Rudyard Kipling's short story
Elephants free antelope
Snorkeling elephants