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The pogocello is a percussion instrument invented in the 1950's in Brooklyn, New York, by a chemist, Mack Perry, the husband of a music educator. It was manufactured in Far Rockaway New York and New Jersey. It was sold in the United States as a children's musical instrument, but many adults bought them, too. Marching bands in the state of Iowa have had them. On new Year's day they have been played in the Mummers' parade in Philadelphia, PA. There are similar instruments in Australia, Czechoslovakia and in Sweden (Devils Fiddle) and perhaps in other countries. The American traditional music group, the Gloucester Hornpipe and Clog Society, includes a homemade pogocello, made by woodcarver, Rita Dunipace, and pogocello player, David Rosen.

The essential parts of a pogocello are:

  1) a board approximately five or six feet high, 1/2 inch thick, and 2-3 inches wide, held vertically;

  2) 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 you bang the board on a wooden stage or other hard surface it makes a thumping, bass sound. You don't lift it up -- it springs up on its own -- like bouncing pogo stick -- hence the name "pogocello;"

  3) a lightweight tin drum (e.g. a cookie or cake tin) fastened to the board with screws about two feet from the bottom;

  4) a wire fastened at the top and bottom with eye screws, which goes across the drum, and which is tightened with a turnbuckle;

  5) 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

  6) 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. 

  7) many interesting things can be attached to the board to give some percussive variations : tin can lids, jingle bells, bottle caps, a cow bell, a wood block, perhaps a tambourine. 

Pogocellos have been played in blues, soul music, bluegrass and other kinds of bands. Since 1975 the Gloucester Hornpipe and Clog Society, which plays Celtic, French Canadian, and other kinds of folk music, has featured the pogocello