I was playing in a session at Whitby folk festival with Jack. Someone listening in the pub stopped me, and asked about the ocarina. He mentioned that they had played ocarina as a child sometime around the 1950's. They said that people in their family would play ocarina, jaw harp and mouth organ together and that such family activities were common at the time.
He also told me that this kind of thing had started to die out because TV started to become prevalent and that people were using this for entertainment instead of playing instruments. He said that he would often visit a friend that had a TV.
Is this plausible as to why ocarina almost totally died out within Europe and America? Is there any other evidence?
Edited 23-Sep-2026 06:58 PM by Robert.
I haven't seen much at all about the ocarina post-WW2 and pre-Zelda
It definitely would make sense that the rise in popularity of TV would've contributed to the decline of other home entertainments, including the ocarina and other instruments
There will have been something to that. I was a kid in New Zealand before NZ got TV, and it was fairly common for people to make music round the piano - the TV (early 60s) replaced most domestic music making. I last remember doing it with neighbours who had a piano and also didn't have a TV. (NZ had a phenomenally high rate of piano ownership).
The ocarina also faced competition from the recorder. Dolmetsch and Schott solved the mass production problems so thoroughly that no other portable melody instrument could provide as much value for money (and they still can't). No firm put comparable effort into making reliable ocarinas - Waterbury probably could have done it technically but they won't have had the funds.
It was a jew's harp back then. "Jaw harp" is an American fake etymology with mistaken motivations from the 1970s.
