Macon warms up its pipes for kazoo record attempt

By DANIEL YEE - Associated Press Writer

MACON, Ga. --Past the stands of fries and funnel cakes at the Georgia State Fair, a strange bleat erupted from the stands of a nearby ballfield, something akin to a happy duck quacking. Laughter, of course, followed.

Barbara Stewart, one of the world's few experts in the musical instrument called the kazoo, was making a demonstration Thursday before a television crew, who all reacted with wide smiles.

Mirth is the point of spreading the word of the kazoo, which was invented in the 19th century by two men who lived in this middle Georgia city, said Stewart, a one-woman kazoo evangelist from Rochester, N.Y.

Today, millions around the world play the whimsical instrument at birthday parties, political rallies and even far away in the rugged mountains of war.

"It brings people together and we need a little more humor today," said Stewart, whose 2006 tongue-in-cheek book "The Complete How To Kazoo" offers this advice: "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck - it's a duck - or possibly a kazooist."

In the 1840s, a former slave named Alabama Vest is said to have invented the modern kazoo in Macon in collaboration with Thaddeus von Clegg, a German-American clock maker. The kazoo is a type of mirliton, a general category of instruments - some of them with historic roots in Africa - using a hollow tube covered at each end by a membrane with a center mouthpiece.

Macon's link with the kazoo is what has brought Stewart and hundreds of others to the city's fairgrounds, as they planned to break the Guinness World Record on Thursday for largest kazoo ensemble.

To top a Rochester, N.Y., record of 2,679 set on New Year's Eve, they hope to pack the baseball stadium with up to 5,000 kazoo hummers. Organizers have ordered 6,000 kazoos just in case.

Steve Scroggins, organizer of Macon's world record attempt, said he hoped the kazoo event will help unify the city's residents, if only for a song.

"From the old to the young and in between, there's quite a buzz about it. If we could come together and do it, it would be a feel-good event," he said. "I think people will remember it for a long time."

The modern kazoo is a hollow, cigar-shaped tube with a turret in the center that contains a tiny resonator, which can be made of paper, plastic or in some cases, a piece of animal membrane. When a player hums into one end of the tube, the resonator vibrates, giving the kazoo its quirky sound, said Kathy Rice of the Kazoo Boutique Museum and Factory - the country's lone maker of metal kazoos - in Eden, N.Y.

She said it's also one of the first instruments on which U.S. children learn to make a sound - often a delightfully rude one - and its simplicity is the main reason it remains popular in the 21st century.

"Anyone can play it ... as long as you can hum or toot," Rice said. "If you blow into it, not a darn thing is going to happen."

Stewart said the kazoo was important in early blues and country music because musicians could use kazoos to make their voices loud enough to be heard over banjos and other instruments.

In more recent times, the 1980s funk and disco group Skyy used kazoos for gentle backup in their 1980 song "Skyyzoo," said Stewart, who will serve as the event authenticator in Macon. Skyy incidentally made a failed attempt to break the kazoo record last month, gathering more than 2,000 for the record-breaking attempt.

And even guitar-God Eric Clapton deigned to include a kazoo break on his unplugged recording of "San Francisco Bay Blues."

"Everybody under the sun uses it in their bands," Stewart said. "But everyone can participate even if they are not professional. It has a way of unifying of all types of varieties, people of different abilities, of different generations."

Stewart said she's been serenaded by kazoo enthusiasts from Belgium, received comments from kazoo lovers in Russia and has sent hundreds of kazoos to soldiers with the U.S. 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan. She said she hopes that one day efforts to promote the kazoo will be rewarded by Congress declaring the kazoo as the national instrument.

"The important thing is to do this right now - there's too much violence and too much anger," she said. "It's the one issue that people should be able to agree on."

The Central Georgian, 2007, Disclaimer..