National Kazoo Museum Exhibit Comes to Macon, Georgia's Tubman Museum

Overview

Visit Macon and the Tubman African American Museum are pleased to announce that opening on National Kazoo Day, January 28th, the kazoo will return home to Macon, Georgia as part of a special Black History Month exhibit in partnership with the Kazoo Museum & Factory of Beaufort, SC!

The exhibit will remain up through the entirety of February & March. Museum hours of operation are Tuesday through Saturday 9am-5pm. Standard admission is $10 for adults and $6 for ages 3-17. AAA, AARP, Senior, Student, Educator & Military discounts are available, as well as, group rates. Please visit tubmanmuseum.com to learn more.

This pop-up exhibit has been created and customized for Macon and the Tubman Museum, by the original designer/curator of the Kazoo Museum. The exhibit celebrates more than 150 years of kazoo history featuring rare and historic kazoo/archives from around the world and colorful, interactive, made-for-selfie photo opps. The booming music city (where Little Richard, James Brown, The Allman Brothers and Otis Redding all got their starts) will feature the instrument and the musicians who ultimately became fans like The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and more.

Legend has it that freed slave Alabama Vest created the musical instrument we know and love as the kazoo in Macon, Georgia in the 1840s. Inspired by the African horn-mirliton or onion flute, Vest brought his original prototype- made from a simple wooden tube with a piece of paper attached to it- to local clockmaker Thaddeus Von Clegg. Together they produced a design that they officially debuted at the Georgia State Fair in Macon in 1852, calling it a "Down South Submarine."