Remember the Vuvuzela? Meet the World Cup’s Newest Noisemaker

Although it’s selling for $14 a pop, this rattlelike instrument is banned from Brazil’s World Cup stadiums.


Four years ago, the vuvuzela was having a moment. An “instrument of torture” alone, a “swarm of angry bees” in a pack, the South African plastic horn droned endlessly in the background of World Cup games. (Having attended a World Cup match with my vuvuzela, I can explain and defend the practice—blowing a big loud horn is really goddamn fun.) While audiences at home complained, officials for this year’s World Cup in Brazil had a different reaction—they needed one of their own.

Enter the caxirola. Designed by homegrown musical icon Carlinhos Brown specifically for the World Cup, the caxirola is a plastic shaker with finger grips that was certified by the Brazilian Ministry of Sport and FIFA, international soccer’s governing body, as the “official noisemaker” of this summer’s tournament. Brown and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff showcased the instrument at an event last year, with Rousseff calling it more beautiful than the vuvuzela. (That’s nice, because it’s certainly not louder: Researchers at Brazil’s Federal University of Santa Maria determined last year that it would take 30,000 caxirolas to produce the same sound pressure level as a single vuvuzela.)

30,000 caxirolas = 1 vuvuzela

FIFA kept an eye on the caxirola design process, sticking an official seal on each noisemaker once they were ready for production. After South Africa, where vuvuzelas were sold on the cheap by independent vendors outside stadiums and in cities across the country, it’s not hard to imagine the soccer monolith regretting every dollar that went to street peddlers and corner stores instead of its own coffers. Now, you can buy $14 caxirolas on FIFA’s official website, either in Brazil’s traditional yellow and green or decorated with your country’s flag.

There’s just one problem—you won’t be able to use them at the games. Brazil and FIFA drastically underestimated fans’ propensity to throw things: In an April 2013 match where fans were given free caxirolas, they eventually pelted the field with the noisemakers. While local authorities cited concerns over the damage a thrown caxirola could to to someone’s head, as well as the potential for the shaker’s finger grips to be used like brass knuckles, FIFA banned the instrument from last year’s Confederations Cup in Brazil while it was sent back to the drawing board. The new and improved version featured softer grips—bad for punching!—and an inflatable body. It turned out to be too little too late, as Brazil’s Ministry of Justice has banished the caxirola from World Cup stadiums.

That hasn’t stopped FIFA is still trying to unload the noisemakers. They’re listed third among the FIFA store‘s bestsellers, with the site imploring buyers to “Shake your caxirola in support of the 2014 FIFA World Cup!” While the vuvuzela was not exactly a grassroots phenomenon—despite arguments over the horn’s invention, a single company popularized it in 2002—it was at least in widespread use in the years prior to South Africa’s World Cup. Brazil and FIFA’s takeaway—that South Africa’s traditional instrument was all anyone talked about in 2010, so let’s create one for Brazil and sell it—turned out to be a little too optimistic (or a little too cynical).

Even the caxirola’s designer is having second thoughts. “When I see this instrument sold for $14, I think it’s a bit absurd,” Brown told the Wall Street Journal last week. “Maybe it’s not an instrument that’s good for the World Cup.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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