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A pogocello is a percussion instrument specifically, an idiophone. It was created in the 1950s in Brooklyn, New York by a chemist, Mack Perry, the husband of a music educator, Sylvia Perry. Perry patterned it after a similar instrument called a bumbass (boombas, boomba, or boom bass) also known as a stump fiddle (or stumpf fiddle). Pogocellos were manufactured in Brooklyn and Far Rockaway, New York and in New Jersey. The pogocello was sold in the United States for decades as a musical instrument for children, but many adults also bought them for themselves.
Pogocellos have been seen in marching bands in Iowa and in the Mummers' parade in Philadelphia, PA on New Year's Day. Similar instruments may be found today in Australia, Czechoslovakia and in Sweden (a Devil's fiddle or Devil's stick) and in other countries, for example at Oktoberfests. They have been played in blues, soul, bluegrass and other kinds of musical groups. Television show host, Garry Moore, played one on his show in the 1950s. Since 1975 the Gloucester Hornpipe and Clog Society, an American traditional music group which plays Celtic, French Canadian, Appalachian, nautical, and other kinds of folk music, has featured a pogocello made by woodcarver Rita Dunipace, and pogocello player David "Doc" Rosen. Photos of the pogocello may be found at http://www.hornpipe.org/pogocello.html and of stumpfiddles at http://geocities.com/concertina.home/stumpfiddle/stumpfiddle_photos/stumpf_photos.htm
The essential parts of a pogocello are:
- a pine or fir board approximately five or six feet high, 1/2 inch thick, and 2-3 inches wide, held vertically;
- a bolt fastened to the back of the board at the bottom with two eye screws. Surrounding this bolt is an outward-coiling spring. When the board is banged on a wooden stage or other hard surface it makes a thumping, bass sound. You do not lift it up—it springs up on its own, like bouncing a pogo stick, hence the name pogocello;
- a lightweight tin drum (e.g. a cookie, cake or pie tin) fastened to the board about two feet from the bottom with screws;
- a wire fastened at the top and bottom of the board with eye screws, that goes across the drum, and which is tightened with a turnbuckle;
- a bracket bolted onto the cookie tin holding a piece of bent coat hanger so that it is fastened at one end to the wire, and so that the other end rests lightly against the drum; and
- a threaded wooden rod, about 2 1/2 feet long, which is drawn like a bow across the wire. When the rod is drawn across the tightened wire, it causes the bent coat hanger to repeatedly rap against the drum. This makes a sound like a snare drum roll. Thumping the stick, for example on a wooden stage, gives a bass sound. The especially loud alternating bass and snare sounds produced by the instrument are like a bass and snare drum in a New Orleans traditional Jazz band.
- attachments to the board for percussive variations: tin can lids, jingle bells, bottle caps, a cow bell, a wood block, perhaps a tambourine.
A demonstration of how to play a Pogocello/Stumpfiddle can be seen at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_NlVo4OTX40
Further reading
- Andrews, Frances M. and Clara E. Cockerille. Your School Music Program: A Guide To Effective Curriculum Development. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1958.
- Langdon, Grace and Irving W. Stout. Helping Parents Understand Their Child's School: A Handbook For Teachers. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1957.
- Association for Childhood Education International. "Membership Service Bulletin". Bulletin of the Association for Childhood Education. Issue 96. 1955