Sunday, March 29, 2009

March 29, 2009 - Boom-ba

My Influences:


Boom-ba
Percussion Instrument of Pennsylvania Dutch Tradition

There are two questions typically associated with this beautiful invention.
What?
Dear friends, this is a musical instrument that is most often credited to the Pennsylvania Dutch. Really, it's any body's guess its true origin. If one does a brief search on the subject, a number of different histories can be found depending on the name used.
It appears that the boom-ba goes by a few names with respect to cultural background: pogo cello, polka cello, stump(f) fiddle, devil's (teufel) stick, lagerphone, Turkish Jingle, Chinese pavilion, etc.
No matter what you call it (boom-ba is my personal choice), it is a fantastic and joyful noise-maker! Essentially, it's a pole of some kind with any number of different percussion instruments attached. It is typically held in one hand and bounced on the floor while being struck by the other hand in some manner (drum stick, hand, magic).
Why?
This isn't really a question with an answer! My best guess: one day, some poor soul didn't have an instrument handy so he fashioned himself this device using whatever random bits happened to be in his presence. Genius!

I grew up in an area and family with ties to the Pennsylvania Dutch heritage. One of my first memories of excitement over a musical instrument was my step-grandfather's boom-ba. I don't remember him playing the thing a whole lot but when he did, it was truly wonderful!
I was permitted to try it under strict supervision; such an instrument could truly corrupt a young, impressionable mind (or, even, an aged, incautious mind).
From time to time, at family reunions, five or six of the senior members would bust out their boom-bas and have themselves quite a time (no musical accompaniment, just boom-bas).
-Definitely, a time when the question WHY? is most appropriate!

In recent years, Lauryn and I decided that we should construct our very own family boom-ba.
We did.

Lauryn premiered this great new addition at the last Big Jug Band performance! What a time we had!
I would like to recommend that everyone build his own boom-ba. It's a rather cathartic endeavor and will surely go a long way toward achieving world peace and personal harmony.
Hooray Boom-ba!

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Some links:
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Pogo-Cello

"All night long, I dreamed of pretty girls and candy. Life is great!"
~ Alexander High

1 comment:

Mr. Haas said...

Great post i too remeber my gradnparents wailing away on their Boom-bas. they were members of the Happy Boom-Badiers. What times we had as kids watching this show of percussion. thanks for the post and the visit to my family past!

About Me

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Austin, Texas, United States
Music has been, at the very least, a truly notable part of most of my life. It was guitar in the late '80s through the '90s, playing the punk rock and death metal until the uilleann pipes came along to show me Irish music. Somewhere in the midst of the pipering madness, I decided to pick up a string bass. Next thing I knew, I was in Austin, TX studying traditional jazz and playing string bass full-time. Music has been good to me and continues to show me the good things in life. With this blog, I hope to share some of those good things (more than likely, I'll probably share some rants, too). I hope you get something from it, even if it's just a good laugh (with me or at me: your choice).