Folk Process Marches Vuvuzela into The 21st Century

So, I’m sitting on a barstool at McMennamin’s drinking a pint-a-porter and squinting at a soccer game on the teevee. It’s The World Cup. The Uruaguays are kicking the crap out of the Estonias, or something like that.

I can’t really tell. I lost my eyeglasses on a trip to Pittsburgh and the teevee is buzzing like it’s full of angry hornets.

I hate that noise,” says guy on the next stool.

“What noise?” says I.

“The noise on the teevee,” he says,”It’s some kind of goddam horn. They won’t stop blowing it. And, it sounds like bees!”

I squint at him. He looks hateful. We drink some porter.

Having spent decades of my life immersed in the “art” and “culture” of Folk Music, I know a little bit about annoying noises. Tuvan Throat Singing and Bob Dylan’s harmonica “playing” immediately spring to mind.

It turns out that this horn they are blowing is called a Vuvuzela. I’m not making this up. Say it with me: “Voo-Voo-Zuh-La.”

It’s a Traditional South African Folk Instrument. Which by default, probably makes this Folk Music –if Folk Music includes three hours of buzzing at roughly the loudness of a jumbo jet screaming off the tarmac at JFK.

The noise is so annoying that television networks have taken measures to filter it out, and internet guides have popped up showing folks how to block it from their teevee sets and computers. None of them work.

The Folk Process is not so easily interrupted.

FIFA, the guys in charge of The World Cup have rejected a proposed Vuvuzela Ban on the grounds that it would be discriminatory against South African Culture, completely ignoring that discrimination is an important, historical aspect of South African Culture. Further, they get kind of snotty when we cal it a soccer game. Apparently, it’s a football match.

Idiots.

I’m merely grateful that The World Cup isn’t being played in Minnesota, where we’d be subjected to a hundred-thousand Minnesotans blowing deafening Bob Dylan harmonicas for three hours. I’m just as relived that nobody knows where Tuvan Throat Singers come from, so that they can’t play for The World Cup there either.

So, it was with this content sense of relief and gratitude that my pint-a-porter and I settled onto my stool at The Mermaid Inn, where they have the good graces to seldom turn on the teevee.

“I hate that noise,” says the barmaid.

It’s that damnable Vuvuzela Noise! And, squintintg, I see that it’s coming form the next stool where there’s a nerd with an i-phone. I can keep cool. I can handle this.

“Who’s winning?” says I, “The The Panamas or The Greeces?”

“Oh, no,” says he, “I’m not watching The World Cup. I just downloaded the Vuvuzela app for my phone.”

I suppress the urge to dunk his phone in his fizzy-yellow-beer, realizing that The Folk Process, without compromise or relent, has just lurched forward again like a ninety-year-old Pete Seeger stumbling onto the stage at Madison Square Garden.

Vuvuzela marches on.

Now there’s a button on some videos at [url]www.YouTube.com[/url] with a soccer ball icon at the bottom. Click it and it makes a Vuvuzela noise. Here’s a link to one where you can hear a Vuvuzela instead of William Shatner. (So, it’s not completely without merit).

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYDV0iqPMck[/url]

The Vuvuzela’s moment has come. The guy who brought the plastic Vuvuzela to the market in South Africa is also in the business of selling ear plugs. He’s my new hero.