Made Music With Kitchen Utensils

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30478, 27 June 1964, Page 2

Made Music With Kitchen Utensils

A collection of kitchen utensils ranging from a biscuit cutter to some jelly moulds provided “musical instruments” for a group of Christchurch housewives at a radio recording session last evening.

The four women were the first contestants in the “I.G.A. Housewives’ Hootenanny”, and the recording made will be the first of a series of weekly programmes commencing soon. A “hootenanny” was a “sing-song round a piano, with everyone playing their own improvised instruments”, the compere (Mr Paul (Gregory) explained to the I audience participating.

“Anything that will make a noise,” he added. The hootenanny group took him at his word. Spoons in bottles, a number of preserving jar screw-bands on. a string, and the biscuit cutter rasped by the handle of a cake scraper helped make sound effects for a rendering of “Jingle Bells”. A comb and tissue, and a partly-filled ridged shakermixer agitated rhythmically accompanied the singing Of “Camptown Races”. Two plastic jelly moulds clapped together by the leader of the group made a realistic hoofbeat background.

Mr Gregory conducted with a carving steel. “It was the only thing in the kitchen that looked in the least like a conductor’s baton,” he said. The best group each month will win a sum of money for the organisation or charity which they represent.