SPURspectives

To the drone of vuvuzelas the US National Team’s World Cup drama came to an end this last weekend with Ghana winning 2-1 in overtime. It’s bittersweet. I’m sad that it’s over for the US, but happy that we did so well. The question that remains is, will the vuvuzela infiltrate US soccer the way that it took over the South African World Cup?

I wrote about the blasted horns last week and called their drone otherworldly. Well, it turns out there is more truth to that than you might think. My dear friend and chronic trumpeter, Steve Magas, sent me a link to an NPR story from 2007 about the B flat tone that is blasted by vuvuzelas. It seems B flat is a mysteriously powerful tone.

In the story it drives alligators into a killing frenzy. Listen for yourself. No other note seems to matter, but a good B flat gets them fighting mad. I suspect we’ll see vuvuzelas at Florida games in the near future. There is also a massive black hole in the Perseus Cluster that has hummed B flat for billions of years – 57 octaves below middle C. They even take you to a stairwell in an apartment building that will continue your B flat humming very, very long after you stop. Eerie.

So, there really may be some natural force behind the popularity of the vuvuzela. Or, it may just be fun to annoy the hell out of your friends. To provide some level of marketing information in this post, I thought I would mention Neil van Schalwyck, the inventor of the plastic vuvuzela. In a stroke of sheer genius, van Schalwyck has developed matching ear plugs in team colors that are sold at matches where vuvuzelas are sold. Always look at both sides of the market!

I leave you with the Vuvuzela Concerto in B Flat. Grab your favorite vuvuzela and click here to go to the musical score and honk off the nearest gator. Go USA!

This photograph is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 South Africa License.

Tags: creativity, marketing, Vuvuzela, World Cup