The Swazzle (Part One)
The Swazzle(Part One)
The Swazzle – Mr. Punch’s Voice – part one
The unknown tongue – no longer! Pike’s apprentice, in the study: ‘The London Labour and The London Poor’, insists that the Swazzle is kept a secret. A secret as a means of keeping the numbers of Punch workers in check. He describes a closed community (one without trust – ah, nothing changes!) where-in each worker knew where the other was working and as one called it a day, the other went out, a bit like the trains at Waterloo Railway Station. History records that workers walked up to twenty miles in a day, performing when they could and swapping bottlers (if they happened across another ‘show’) in order to share the takings. But I digress.
There ae some pretty weird drawings out there supposedly depicting an illustration of the swazzle. But for our purpose, a simple description will suffice. Recall, as a child, how ‘you’ placed a blade of grass between your thumbs and you blew though the gap in your thumbs, in order to make a noise. Well, you are doing pretty the same thing, when you shove a shove down your throat. Only the thumbs are either metal or plastic and the grass, haberdashers material tape.
Two pieces of metal, about 25mm x 15mm, are bent around a scaffold pole, these are placed together, one concave the other convex and a piece of material (haberdashers tape secured between the ‘plates’ ) subsequently wrapped around to form a small sandwich construction. To hold the tape in place the whole is secured by wrapping thread around its length.
Many things need saying. The plates need to be true rectangles, the tape needs to be closely woven, the thread adequately wrapped around. For £20 buy one or for £40 buy two and provided you don’t drop and lose them, you’ll have them for life. ‘What if I swallow them?’, I hear you cry. More on that anon. For now, buy the swazzle and concentrate on perfecting its use.
The swazzle is used wet. You dip it in water (although the old timers used to claim that it had to dipped in rum, although I suspect this claim was voiced merely to get a free drink) and it is placed on the tongue and pressed to the roof of the mouth. Air forced up and through it, channelled by the tongue, makes the ‘blade of grass’ vibrate inside the swazzle, producing the sound we all love.
The tape needs some slack inside the swazzle, otherwise your Mr. Punch will sound as though he is wearing a too tight pair of trousers and the squeal produced, will not resonate with your audience. To get the sound you require, listen to performers on YOUTUBE and select the one you like best and copy it.
The knack of using the swazzle will take a little time to master but as magician Jamy Ian Swiss stresses ‘the method is not the trick’ the trick is to make Mr. Punch ‘talk’ while being able to carry on a ‘conversation’ with the other characters whilst on stage. Or to talk directly to a member of your audience and for that person to understand what it is Mr. Punch is saying. This takes practice. While you are learning, some performers suggest that you tie a nice length of thread to the swazzle so if you go to swallow it, you can yank it back, DON’T do this. You’ll do more harm than good. Providing the swallow is well made and that it goes down the right way, after 48 hours all will be well. Tie a piece of thread to your swazzle and then walk out amongst your colleagues and see how they take the pxxx out of you.
Now when I was learning, my first swazzle came courtesy of The Supreme Magic Company. The plates were much too thin, which meant their edge was sharp and the swazzle could be deformed during use. All this is surprising given Edwin Hooper’s claim that he built the World’s largest magic dealership off the back of his Punch & Judy beach earnings.I should say, Edwin was a worker. He’d hire a taxi man for the day and then work three beaches doing several shows on each beach but moving from one beach to the next during the day. The astute among my readership will ‘see’ that several booths were required, additionally, how about the amplification system? In his superb book: ‘Hallo Mr. Punch’, Edwin suggests amplification is not required. Further, he worked simply. Few props were employed and worked the dolls ‘hands over head’. His booth comprised few components. So simple, in fact, that the taxi driver became expert in setting them up and knocking them down. All Edwin had to do was to load-out the puppets and he was off. Why waste your time between shows resting, when there’s another beach to service, and money to be earnt?
Anyway, Supreme, at that time (1975) was about the only place that I knew of that could supply a Swazzle so Hobson’s Choice provided few options. No Internet in those days!
Wetting the swazzle, and sticking it in my mouth, I walked around my parent’s garden trying to cough through the swazzle until I got a noise. It took a while. Suddenly I made an indiscriminate sound. Then I didn’t. Then I did. ‘You’ just keep trying. After a while you’ll get a sound every time. When you do, you are on your way.
Now you’ll not forget this experience. Although the end result is what you’ll be aiming at, always enjoy the journey; you’ll never come this way again and like losing your virginity, this is a once in a lifetime’s experience – make it a good one.
Be relaxed, don’t hurry, don’t stress. John Styles has written that he went out into Epping Forest to learn and, if nothing else, to disturb the courting couples getting amorous in the undergrowth!
This is a life skill that once acquired you’ll not be able to unlearn or to go through this initiation stage ever again, so I repeat, don’t get stressed – enjoy the moment.
To Be Continued….