{"id":170452,"date":"2026-02-09T15:14:44","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T15:14:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/170452\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T15:14:44","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T15:14:44","slug":"travel-the-world-through-this-one-instrument-shop-in-berkeley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/170452\/","title":{"rendered":"Travel the world through this one instrument shop in Berkeley"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story aired in the February 9, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents. <\/a><\/p>\n

If you have ever walked into Lark in the Morning you might have heard this:<\/p>\n

Sound of Danboo<\/p>\n

The store is a combination museum for rare<\/a>, international instruments, a repair shop, and a brick and mortar retail store. It also serves as a hub for lessons in everything from banjo to the sitar to the hurdygurdy.<\/p>\n

After working in tech, the current owner bought Lark in the Morning, and continues the legacy of a beloved world music instrument store. <\/p>\n

Click the button above to listen!<\/p>\n

Story Transcript:<\/p>\n

REPORTER: Lark in the Morning is a feast for the senses. Mostly sound\u2026<\/p>\n

Sound of wings, rain stick, drum, stone xylophone<\/p>\n

REPORTER: But also touch. The instruments are made from a huge variety of materials, everything from a donkey jaw<\/a> with a full set of teeth used as a percussion instrument in Peru to plastic and steel hand pans from Sweden.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A donkey jaw sits next to a conch shell on a shelf at Lark in the Morning.<\/p>\n

Sound of hand pans<\/p>\n

ERIC AZUMI: This is a kind of portable Cajon<\/a>. It\u2019s a box but it\u2019s got a skin on it, but just a piece of wood on the other side<\/p>\n

Sound of hitting cajon<\/p>\n

REPORTER: The shop has more than a thousand different kinds of instruments from 50 different countries.<\/p>\n

ERIC: This one comes from Vietnam\u2026 just a little xylophone but made from stone<\/p>\n

Sound of xylophone<\/p>\n

REPORTER: No one can be an expert at all of these instruments but Eric has a vast knowledge of his inventory and a deep curiosity and respect for the artistry.<\/p>\n

Sound of Eric tuning Guzheng<\/p>\n

REPORTER: The sounds are even interesting when he is doing mundane work. Here he is tuning a mini Guzheng<\/p>\n

ERIC: Ancient Chinese instrument. Some people call it a Chinese harp<\/a>.<\/p>\n

REPORTER: Next he detunes a banjo to take the strings off<\/p>\n

Sound of banjo de-tuning, spray<\/p>\n

REPORTER: And then he cleans it lightly, just enough to take the crud off, not to make it look brand new<\/p>\n

ERIC: The patina is kinda what\u00a0makes this thing interesting.<\/p>\n

REPORTER: Lark in the Morning was founded in 1974 as a mail order store by Mickie Zekley. Over the next couple of decades, Mickie and his wife Elizabeth expanded, opening three stores, and starting the Lark Camp for World Music. It\u2019s still flourishing 45 years later.<\/p>\n

After they sold the business in early 2000, Lark in the Morning struggled, and the stores closed. Mickie and Elizabeth bought the business back, and when they sold it to Eric in 2017, he revived its brick and mortar presence in Berkeley.<\/p>\n

ERIC: One of the great things about taking on this business is meeting the people who make and repair these instruments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

REPORTER: From around here and around the world.<\/p>\n

ERIC: Also we get a lot of instruments here for repair and people have no place to go to get their Ood repaired.\u00a0<\/p>\n

REPORTER: So they come here. People also come to find interesting sounds.<\/p>\n

ERIC: We have a bunch of people who just are here as either sound healers who are are doing sound journeys and they’re coming here looking for interesting sounds that are made by the the rattles or the drums or the other weird things that we might have.<\/p>\n

Sound of rain stick cross-fades with wind wand<\/p>\n

ERIC: There are sound engineers and they’re working to score a movie or to sound effects for various things. The wind wands were used in Dune.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

REPORTER: Eric says many other customers just come in to experiment and explore.<\/p>\n

ERIC: There’s something else that’s moving people to pick up an instrument here and to try to make nice sounds come out of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A lot of people, they have been intimidated by the traditional instruments that they maybe played in middle school. I think in some ways it does make it easier to pick up an instrument that is rare or unusual to you and your circle of people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sound of death whistle<\/p>\n

REPORTER: Instruments like this Death Whistle<\/a>. Eric has been picking up instruments unfamiliar to him for much of his life.<\/p>\n

He mostly grew up on the East Coast.<\/p>\n

ERIC: My dad’s Japanese \u2014 I’d gone to kindergarten in Tokyo<\/p>\n

REPORTER: He worked as a teacher and in IT, in the US but mostly overseas. When he decided he wanted to return to the US, he thought the Bay Area would be good for someone in tech.<\/p>\n

ERIC: But once I got back and started looking for jobs, I could just feel that my heart was not in it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

REPORTER: So he started looking for work that was meaningful, and that had an international connection. Lark in the Morning was the perfect fit<\/p>\n

ERIC: You know, it had this international thing and these cool instruments which, I’d always had a thing for music and musical instruments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

REPORTER: Now he\u2019s surrounded by these cool instruments.<\/p>\n

ERIC: This one\u2019s a little baby djembe<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sound of baby djembe<\/p>\n

ERIC: Sounds great, looks great, smells great, actually\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

REPORTER: You heard that right, Sounds great, looks great smells great<\/p>\n

RACHEL: Wait \u2014 where\u2019s it from and how does it smell?<\/p>\n

ERIC: This is from Mali<\/a>. It smells woody and goaty to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

REPORTER: I ask him how he feels when he comes to work in the morning.<\/p>\n

ERIC: The enterprise is not making a lot of money.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t expecting to get rich but I don\u2019t want it to die but when everyone is here and we are working and when people come into the shop and they are just delighted to be here\u2026 nothing could be better. It\u00a0is just so much fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n

REPORTER: People even make pilgrimages to see the shop<\/p>\n

ERIC: Some people will spend two hours here just trying everything and looking at the instruments, talking about them with us\u2026 that\u2019s always the best.\u00a0<\/p>\n

REPORTER: Although Lark in the Morning may not make Eric Azumi rich, he does spend his days quietly delighting in learning new instruments and sharing them with his customers.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The sign outside the shop, which is in the Gilman neighborhood in Berkeley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story aired in the February 9, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents. If you have ever walked into Lark…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-170452","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-oakland","9":"tag-oakland-headlines","10":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}