It’s interesting to me how lost in the mists of time Snoopy’s jaw-harp playing has become. That one clip on the internet is something I don’t recognize, but as a child in the 1960s who loved Snoopy, I definitely remember him playing the instrument. And while memory can be wrong, in this case there is clear evidence that it was a thing, because they manufactured the Snoopy jaw harps to capitalize on it.
Anyway, I now know not to bother mentioning Snoopy in the context of sharing the jaw harps with the kids - sounds like they may or may not know who Snoopy is, but they certainly won’t associate him with jaw harp playing.
When I was a kid, in the late '60s and early '70s, there was a TV host here in Chicago (Frazier Thomas, on WGN), who hosted several kids/family shows. He would occasionally play a jaw harp, but I also remember him talking about how it was an instrument that had to be played with care, because it was possible to damage your teeth if you didn’t use the proper technique.
That’s what I came to ask, what is the proper technique, how do you play that frickin’ thing? I understand that the inner latch (or tongue? I don’t know what to call it) is elastic and you somehow pluck it to let it vibrate and use your mouth as a resonance chamber. But how do you place it on (in?) your mouth?
Fun fact: the instrument is called “Maultrommel” in German, literally “mouth drum”. I think both names make sense, it’s somehow a combination of a harp and percussion.
This page says that you place the inner frame against the front of your teeth, while making sure that there’s a space between your upper and lower teeth. The page also has a number of other “don’t do it this way” callouts, suggesting to me that there are several ways in which one could chip a tooth or otherwise injure yourself while playing it.
For me it was sort of the opposite, I remember the scene in the clip above with him playing the jaw harp, I don’t remember him playing any other instruments at all.
Lots of videos on the internet. They do mention “be careful of your teeth!”
I can’t actually play the darn thing at all, but I think that’s because the Snoopy harps (I’m pretty sure the ones I bought are the same manufacturer, it’s practically identical in shape, color of the box, etc.) are poor quality. I just watched a video about how to make your cheap harp work better - I may try that.
“Jaw Harp” is a modern replacement for “Jew’s harp” which has been rejected because it was presumably a slur: the idea is it’s a cheap or fake version of a harp.
Dang, that’s another thing I wanted to ask and was afraid to: wasn’t this instrument once called Jew’s harp? Because that’s the English name for it I remember having first learned (must’ve been 30-40 years ago).
I still hear it referred to as Jew’s harp sometimes. That’s what I grew up knowing the instrument as. I just checked my liner notes for Bela Fleck & The Flecktone’s debut album, and Howard Levy (who primarily plays harmonica and piano for them) is credited with playing a “Jew’s harp” in there on one of the songs. That was in 1990, though. But searching on Youtube I still find a lot of hits for Jew’s harp in addition to jaw harp. Huh. It also seems wikipedia’s main entry is under “Jew’s harp.”
Yeah, there are tons of “Jew’s Harp” references on line. As the instrument apparently originated in Asia and has zero to do with Judaism, no one seems sure where that came from. MandaJo’s theory that it is because it’s a cheap instrument is the first time I’ve heard that theory - I’ve also read speculation that it came from “gewgaw.” And that it was simply a corruption of “jaw harp.” Who knows.
In any case, “Jew’s harp” sounds like a slur, whether or not it ever was, so just to be safe I think everyone is switching to the safer, more accurate label.
For all I know, it could have originally been a “juice harp,” because playing it with your mouth made it all juicy. But I just pulled that out of my ass (not literally), and I doubt it’s correct.
The Jews’ trump aka Jew’s harp is only attributed to the Jews in English, and there is no actual evidence as to the origin of said attribution. For all we know, it is a brand name. It’s definitely not a harp or a trump nor has anything to do with Jews.
Interesting side note. I was friends with the Editor of a Major newspaper.
I asked why they didn’t get rid of certain comics, such as Peanuts (The artist has been dead for a good bit, they are all repeats) and she said that changing a comic got more reader response , and threats to cancel than anything. She said she agreed with me, but wouldn’t dare to cancel Peanuts, the older readers would scream!
And, similarly, old strips like For Better or For Worse, Doonesbury, and Get Fuzzy are still taking up space in newspaper comic pages with repeats of years-old strips, despite their creators still being alive (though I think that Garry Trudeau still writes new Doonesbury strips for Sundays).
It leaves less room for new comics, but given that newspaper readership is (a) declining, and (b) likely largely made up of older readers, it’s undoubtedly a business decision to avoid ticking off a chunk of your reader base by discontinuing the strip that they’ve been loyally reading for decades (even if it’s all just repeats now).
