Apes and monkeys, (there was no distinction between the two), were depicted playing the pipe and tabor from
the earliest images onwards. These, and imaginative hybrid animals (also known as grotesques), were gentle
satires depicting monkeys 'aping' many traits in human nature, the good and not-so-good.

"apes may appear as emblems of usury or lust, but they can also appear as symbols of social status. Even when
the apes are represented with positive traits, there seems to be an element of mischief or malice in the image." 

1501-1525 dancing Flemish

However, "around the middle of the 13th century, the Dominican Guglielmus Peraldus considered the goat
and the ape as foetida animals, which he associated with the buffoon, because all of them are instruments
used by the devil to make people laugh: “It must be noted that scurra is like the goat, or the ape, with which
the devil play exciting men to laughter. The goat is a disgusting animal. The ape is a deformed animal. So
both are strongly disgusting and deformed.”

“In medieval iconography the ape is …often employed in the place of entertainers, … just as this animal imitates
everything without understanding the meaning of anything, jesters and popular players do not know the laws
of music and make themselves ridiculous.”

 ‘The Parody of Musical Instruments in Medieval Iconography ’by Sandra.Pietrin, 2017

1531-48, carved wood, Belgium

1680's satirical poem England:
"..A dancing Baboon, yclep'd Heraclitus,
With Tabor and Pipe began to delight us....”

‘Anecdotes Illustrative of the Manners and History of Europe ‘...by James Peller Malcolm, 1811

1888 story
“they found a mercer asleep by his goods and the first ape took a tabor and a pipe and began to play,
another took a mirror, another a comb and, to conclude, they left  the mercer with little of his stock.
The taboring ape played a moresque and after dancing this Morisco they made a turn around the tower
and returned the way they had come.”

‘Mémoires d'Olivier de La Marche, maître d'hôtel et capitaine des gardes de Charles le Téméraire’ Henri Beaune et J. d’Arbaumont