The study focuses on the phenomenon of barrel-organ playing in the context of Bohemian and Moravian streets and countryside from the beginning of its occurrence in our lands to date. The foreword describes the organologic nature of the instrument and its production. The major part of the work is a summary of available
sources about a barrel-organ player: his role in the life of people, whether during their daily encounters with an "itinerant" person, or his activity in the realm of customary tradition. The role of barrel-organ players has changed, in comparison to modern-day barrel-organ players - buskers as well as members of a
barrel-organ playing club who returned to the streets after 1989. Both lines of barrel-organ players are themes of particular chapters (Barrel-Organ and Busking; A Club of Friends of Mechanical Music and Barrel-Organs). The study ́s goal is to outline a unifying line between the historical and the contemporary practice in barrel-organ playing, as well as it explains when these trends
diverge.