High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Xaphoon is a single-reed keyless woodwind instrument. Its construction is very similar to the chalumeau, a European keyless single-reed instrument that was the ancestor of the clarinet. The tone color produced by a Xaphoon is somewhere between that of a saxophone and a clarinet, and the instrument overblows in 12ths, like a clarinet. The Xaphoon was invented by Brian Wittman in the 1970s; Wittman still makes bamboo instruments by hand in his home on the island of Maui, Hawaii, using local bamboo cut from the forests of the eastern end of the island.