Welcome to Stuffy Mist in History Class from HouseofWorks.com

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry. And I'm Tracy V Wilson.

Hey Tracy, do you know how to play the harmonica?

Uh, no how would be a very generous description.

Almost anyone can get a noise out of it. I am not be melodic.

I can put a harmonica in my mouth and cause it to make noise.

There you go. Yeah, I'm pretty much the same. That's not an area of musical skill that I have ever developed.

And we're going to talk about harmonicas today and sort of how the harmonica came to be this popular.

It is and we're even going to talk about a couple of sort of important harmonica musicians.

For clarity, the German word harmonica spelled with a K is used to apply to several different things.

Harmonicas like we're talking about today, glass harmonicas and accordions.

And the glass harmonica which Benjamin Franklin played a part in developing uses a series of glass bowls arranged together in graduated sizes and uses friction to produce to produce notes.

And that's not what we're talking about today though. And as for the accordion, the accordion and the harmonica are two instruments that are kind of intertwined in terms of development.

They both appeared on the scene in the 1820s and they were kind of developed in tandem throughout the 1800s.

But today we are going to talk about the harmonica in the sense of what is sometimes also called a mouth harp.

You know, probably the image that most people think of when you say the word and probably like something they had a toy version of as a kid.

I love those things when I was a child. I was a danger to myself and others with my toy harmonicas.

So I'm like, why did you have to put it in my stocking if everybody hates me playing it so much? But there you go. So first we're just going to kind of talk about harmonicas and their ancient history roots.

Harmonicas are found all over the world and they are part of the music of numerous cultures.

And that's due at least in part to the fact that it is an exceptionally portable musical instrument.

I mean, you have the harmonica that can do, I don't know, the triangle.

Yeah, like you can you can put pop a harmonica in your pocket and off you go and later on that portability we're going to talk about kind of how that helped it spread.

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