Music: From Mud to Melody

The mouth organ, or harmonica, has been a great comfort to U.S. soldiers in past wars. But priorities in metal have already put a serious crimp in the U.S. harmonica business. This war’s comfort is more likely to come from two easily portable and nonmetallic instruments : the “sweet potato,” or ocarina, and the tonette.

By last week Captain Lorraine E. Watters, music director of the First Service Command, had set up a class in ocarina and tonette playing at Camp Edwards, Mass. It was the latest of scores of similar groups already organized throughout the U.S.

The tonette is practically an old-fashioned penny whistle. It can be played only in one key. But the ocarina has a full set of sharps and flats, confers upon its player a corresponding sense of superior achievement.

Priorities on clay, the usual ocarina material, are no difficulty. “Sweet potatoes” shaped out of plastic have the added advantage of being practically unbreakable. Since Pearl Harbor, sales of plastic ocarinas have skyrocketed. Biggest manufacturer, the Fred. Gretsch Mfg. Co. of Chicago and Brooklyn, now sells some 250,000 to 300,000 a year.

The ocarina’s Latin name is usually said to be derived from the Italian word oca (goose), but some authorities trace it to the Italian occare, meaning to harrow. The ancient Chinese, Aztecs and Incas all played a similar instrument. Its introduction to Western civilization dates from the late 19th Century, when an Italian named Donati made a turnip-shaped flute of baked clay with eight finger holes. He subsequently killed himself by falling off a balcony. Perfected by a German wagon maker named Heinrich Fiehn, Donati’s invention became the rage of Vienna in the ’90s. The very finest ocarinas were manufactured from the mud of the beautiful blue Danube.

Today only a handful of virtuoso ocarinists rate the honor of membership in Boss James Caesar Petrillo’s American Federation of Musicians. But the “sweet potato” has its quota of passionate partisans.

Greatest of these is unquestionably Ocarinist Bernie Ladd, who manufactures his own carefully tuned instruments and plays solos with Andre Kostelanetz’ radio orchestra. Like most serious musicians, Ocarinist Ladd is a stanch traditionalist and prefers mud to plastic. He regards the U.S. Army’s new unbreakable ocarinas as newfangled gadgets unworthy of a master’s breath.