Commun ty Matters August 2015
Fulton Presbyterian Manor
Coming up in Community Matters:
How has music been important to you? In an upcoming issue of Community Matters we will be focusing on music and its role in making our lives better. If you’ve got a story about what music has meant to you, contact Keri Edwards to share your idea.Your story may be selected for the next issue of your community newsletter.
Keeping our brains young with kazoos
The 10:40 exercise group wanted to start a Kazoo Band. They have talked, and joked, about putting on shows for the other residents and sitting at the curb whenever there’s a parade (and we have several every year) and play for them as they march by.
Learning to play a musical instrument has many benefits that will hopefully motivate us to keep on practicing and always hold music in high esteem. Some of the more notable physical benefits include: an increase in the capacity of your memory, team skills, coordination, perseverance, stress relief and respiratory system improvement.
It’s true, the kazoo is a wind instrument. It is usually a short tube, open on both ends and tapers to one end. Near the wider front end of the instrument there is another opening on top called the turret section. This turret, or tower, houses a thin, vibrating membrane. It has no valves or buttons typical of other instruments. The kazoo uses the voice of the musician to produce the sound. When we play a kazoo, we hum into it and that causes the membrane to vibrate. This vibration changes with the sound of the voice giving it its unique kazoo buzzing quality. The kazoo most likely evolved from an African instrument called the mirliton. Just like the kazoo, the mirliton has an internal membrane that creates a buzzing sound when it is played and was a popular AfricanAmerican folk instrument during the 1800s. The modern kazoo was invented by Alabama Vest during the 1840s. He
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