Ricola

Tromba: ay, caramba!

Whoa, boy! What do we have here?  Yesterday I started digging around for info on medieval/baroque instruments. There were some lulus. Crumhorns, which look like you're playing a cane and which produce a sour, whoopee-cushion-like sound. The rackett, which is an incredible-looking object, a big round oxygen-tankish thing with holes all over it. People liked edgy sour honky sounds then, or else they had not figured out how to produce anything better.

Way leads on to way, as Robert Frost once said, and I kept digging out more and more obscure things. I knew a little bit about all those alp-horn-type instruments, but I didn't know they were a form of communication for the village. They could signal births, deaths, coming storms, and other occasions/approaching dangers. Kind of the social networking of 1000 years ago. There are whole ensembles made up of these endless things, which I saw an example of in Switzerland, and they play with such mellowness that I just don't want to hear 'em. No, give me the authentic honky ones, homegrown music played with lusty abandon by amateurs.

But then I found this "thing". I had no idea what it was, elongated but squared-off, not like any horn I'd seen or heard of. It made the most incredible sound, like a garage door opening. After a while I found out it wasn't a horn at all, but a stringed instrument called a tromba marina. Looked like one of those failed attempts to develop the cello or bass. I found very little repertoire for this thing, thank God, and I would imagine just schlepping it around would be torture, trying to get it into a 15-foot case or folding it up or something (the travel-size tromba marina?).

The instrument has a range of three notes, not even as good as a cigar box with rubber bands wrapped around it, but that's not the only problem with it. When I tried to find more tromba marina videos, I got these Spanish things with pictures of storms, tornados and stuff. So I guess it means something else in Spanish, or else it's already in Spanish and has a double meaning? Approaching danger to the eardrums?

I could not help but be reminded of the old Ricola ads: but to my horror, I could only find a very brief clip of the original ad from British TV. THE RICOLA AD ISN'T ON YOUTUBE???????!!! There are a hundred stupid variations, none of which seem to be on TV where I live, but I am not interested in those. They're daft. I want the guy with the horn and the lame singing.