When we were little, we all loved creating a racket with loud instruments, and we couldn’t understand why adults’ ears were incapable of appreciating the anarchic beauty of the joyful noise we made.

This area displays a collection of sonic instruments. Rattles were possibly the first toys that newborn babies played with, mesmerised by their insistent sound. Rattles have been shaken by infants for thousands of years, and the first known ones date back to Egypt before the 16^th century BC. Also shown are several models of children’s phonographs, notably the Storyteller and The Talking Book, made for listening to stories. Also notable is the zither from 1920 with which children, by means of a guide, learned to play the popular Catalan melody El noi de la mare. There is also a selection of music boxes and phonographs from the early 20^th century, along with several barrel organs or pianos operated by a crank handle that activated a cylinder or sheet of perforated paper or card, including one from 1945 made by the important Barcelona manufacturer Vicente Linares.

Also related with music, there is a toy that refers to a group that made one of the greatest contributions to the creation of pop music in the 20^th century: the Beatles, who appear in a musical car under the title Los Ye-yes, made by Rico, from the year 1960.