In 2010, during the World Cup in South Africa, the vuvuzela became a compelling novelty item—the long plastic horn that launched a thousand blog posts. It started as an object of curiosity: What in God’s name was producing that infernal, ominous buzzing on our televisions? Sales of the horn spiked worldwide. (One appeared for a while in our office, but after a couple of terrible soundings it was thankfully dispatched.) The love affair was short-lived, and soon vuvuzelas were renounced as a scourge. They disrupted on-field communications, spoiling broadcasts. They might even be dangerous. Sports venues around the world took notice, and banned them. Yankee Stadium added them to a list of forbidden items; so did the 2012 London Olympics.
It must have seemed like a good, uncomplicated idea when the Brazilian musician Carlinhos Brown proposed an alternative noisemaker to the vuvuzela for his country’s turn as the host of the World Cup, which begins next week. Last year, Brown unveiled a brightly colored plastic rattle that he called the caxirola, named after the caxixi, a traditional Brazilian woven instrument filled with seeds. The mass-produced plastic version lacked its inspiration’s charm, but it had a few things going for it. Researchers found that the caxirola produced a decibel level significantly lower than the vuvuzela’s. Played together, caxirolas indeed made a joyful, mostly pleasant noise, percussive rather than droning like the South African horns. And like the vuvuzela, it’s fun to say: ka-shee-role-ah.
The caxirola was backed by Brazil’s Ministry of Sports, and endorsed by FIFA, soccer’s world governing body and the official organizer of the World Cup—both of whom were surely pleased to have another piece of plastic that they couple slap a logo or a flag onto, and put up for sale. The Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff sang its praises. “This image of the green-and-yellow caxirola, it enchants,” she said. “It is an object that has the ability to do two things: to combine the image with sound and take us to our goals.” A year ahead of the World Cup, the caxirola was a newer, better vuvuzela.
Until Brazilian soccer fans got their hands on them, that is. Last April, during a match between E. C. Vitória and E. C. Bahia (Carlinhos Brown’s home club), angry fans threw dozens of caxirolas onto the field, suspending play. There is a certain pleasant symmetry to the idea of a government-endorsed feel-good tchotchke that has been foisted onto fans being thrown back onto the field in disgust. Pleasant, that is, in the abstract—but not for the players, coaches, or referees on the pitch, or for fans who might catch a plastic rattle in the back of the head. They did look a little like neon hand grenades.
This incident led Brazil’s sports ministry to ban the caxirola from the Confederations Cup, an international World Cup warmup, held last June. And, citing security risks, they have extended the ban to the twelve venues around the country that will host this year’s World Cup. This means that the official noisemaker of the 2014 World Cup is officially banned from the 2014 World Cup. That, of course, hasn’t stopped people from selling them. The caxirola is still available at the FIFA online store, for fourteen bucks. There is even a custom-designed one for American fans, in red, white, and blue. Get one to shake, alone, at home.
If you were looking for a handy, plastic metaphor for the financial boondoggle and logistical nightmare of hosting an international sporting event, you could do worse than the poor little caxirola. The instrument entered the world on a rush of national pride and good will, but now, some years on, after being fully co-opted and badly mismanaged by the government, they are mostly unloved—revealed as impractical and ill-considered, a half-baked idea that didn’t quite shake out.
Photograph: Xinhua News Agency/Eyevine/Redux
