A simple Mirliton which amplifies the human voice while also imparting a buzzing, rasping quality to it. First manufactured in the USA around 1850, it has been produced since the 1890s in many countries under different names and in a variety of forms. It now consists of a cigar-shaped tube of plated metal or plastic with a flattened opening at one end and a smaller, circular opening at the other (see illustration). Over a large hole on the top a circular disc of animal membrane or equivalent material is held in place by a screw-on metal cup. As the performer sings or hums into the flattened end the membrane vibrates (strongly if the cup is uncovered but less so if partly covered by the hand) and many kinds of wavering and loud, quacking effects are possible. The sound of the kazoo could be amplified by fitting a trumpet or trombone bell to the end. In this form it was often known as a ‘jazz-horn’, ‘jazzophone’, ‘cantophone’, etc. It originally had an important role in black American music, especially in country string bands and early jazz ensembles, but is now often regarded as a toy. In England the kazoo was known as bazooka, gazoota, gazooka or hooter and was popularly used in the 1920s and 1930s in working men’s bands (see Holland). In the West Riding of Yorkshire, where the kazoo was known as a ‘Tommy Talker’, there were many ‘Tommy Talker bands’ and ‘Waffen Fuffen bands’ which played at carnivals and galas. In these the kazoo was the principal instrument, augmented by a variety of others which, for the purposes of competition, had to be made of tin. The instrument is also used in some professional popular music ensembles and occasionally in contemporary art music compositions.
R. Wharton and A. Clarke: ‘The Tommy Talker Bands of the West Riding’, Musical Traditions, i (1983), 16–21
B. Holland: Here’s to the Next Time: Carnival Jazz Bands of the Nineteen-Twenties and Thirties (Manchester, 1988)
B. Hopkin: ‘Mirlitons: Kazoos and Beyond’, Experimental Musical Instruments, v/1 (1989), 4–8
ANTHONY C. BAINES, PAUL OLIVER/MARTIN KIRNBAUER