More than 400 harmonica enthusiasts came to Tulsa to celebrate the blues harp with a convention.
In 1962, a Dearborn, Michigan man named Earl Collins Jr. ran newspaper advertisements looking for other harmonica players. The group he started recently held its convention in Tulsa for the fourth time since 2017.
The biggest problem for The Society for the Preservation and the Advancement of the Harmonica (SPAH), the group that held the convention, is getting more young people to play.
SPAH has a new president who aims to get more young folks interested in the folksy instrument.
Jerry Deall, a bespectacled man with a goatee and a deep baritone voice, was just elected president of SPAH. He ran unopposed.
It’s obvious why he’ll be the next president when Deall talks to other harmonica lovers. He’s personable and willing to be the point man on any introduction, whether he’s speaking to a first-time player or a professional.
He’s knowledgeable about the history of the instrument, its accessories and its geographic history. He also has a sense of humor about the quirky instrument.
“What’s the difference between a harmonica and an onion? Nobody cries when you chop up a harmonica,” Deall said. “How do you know when a harmonica player is at your door? He doesn’t have the right key, and he doesn’t know when to come in.”
This year marked Deall’s twentieth convention with SPAH.
The group has stood the test of time, but when you look around the hallways of Tulsa’s downtown Hyatt hotel, something’s noticeable about the conference attendees. Many of them are older. There’s a grim but stark reminder of this in the middle of the vendor room.
“People have their grandparents pass away and they don’t know what to do with all of their harmonicas,” Deall said. “They send them to us, and we auction them off and this goes to the youth foundation.”
Preservation and advancement are the two key words for the organization. They want to preserve the history of the harmonica while getting kids interested. That’s a big part of Deall’s task as incoming president.
“There’s a lot of gray hair around here and we need to have some naturally dark hair coming,” Deall said.
A few younger players do add a little pepper to the mostly salty-haired room.
The younger players were awarded scholarships from the William Rosebush Youth Fund that pays for attendance at the convention. Four to six people under the age of 21 get the grant. They’re the lifeblood of the harmonica’s future.
“We promote them learning and then we promote them teaching, actually other youth and inspiring other youth,” Deall said.
Some young players ranging from 19 to 30 years old are willing to talk about why they play such an old-timey instrument.
They came from all over the world to Tulsa to congregate and conversate about the Mississippi Sax. Sunny Kumar, now living in Santa Clara, California, started playing the harmonica because he thought it would be easy.
“So, I was on the internet, and I was from a small town in India, and I was like I need to be cool, I need to be playing music,” Kumar said. “What’s the easiest instrument to fake? A diatonic harmonica. And that was wrong, very, very wrong.”
Kumar compared his love of harmonica to speed cubing which is a competitive version of completing Rubik’s cubes quickly.
The instrument is spellbinding for the new players. They try to perfect their form while learning from pros like Dennis Gruenling, PT Gazell and Hank Shreve.
Getting better can become a healthy addiction.
Clevelander Jarred Goldweber said there’s a deep love of playing from the younger group at SPAH.
“I kind of feel like that little kid that likes to talk about trains, you know, or like dinosaurs or cowboys. Because harmonica is such an obsession,” Goldweber said.
Goldweber played nothing but video games before his mom enrolled him in an arts camp. Despite not wanting to go to the camp Goldweber was given a harmonica and he’s been playing ever since. He’s now a part of a young group of players.
The group is a huge fan of each other's work. Goldweber couldn’t believe he got to meet Boston’s Shane Sager, a pro who regularly tours with Sting.
One of the biggest issues for players is that loving the harmonica can be lonely.
“Unless you’re in a harmonica club, or you live in a city that has a lot of players, you exist mostly in isolation. There’s not a lot of instruments that exist like that. That exist in isolation,” Sager said. “Most of the time you’re taught in the school, or you play in a band, but with harmonica that’s not always the case.”
Sager previously played soccer competitively, but after he broke his arm, he started blowing into the harmonica. Similar to Goldweber, he was shown the instrument, then got the harmonica bug.
Tulsans are lucky. The town has a harmonica club. The Route 66 Harmonica Club hosted the convention. This is why SPAH comes to Green Country. There are enough players in Tulsa, and it’s centrally located. The central location brought plane loads of pros and amateurs to town.
The journeys of the younger players mirror the older group of SPAH members. They come from different backgrounds from all over the world. They descended upon a hotel in Tulsa to play together, to learn and most of all try to preserve and advance the harmonica for generations to come.
