Cape Horn

What the Urban Dictionary defines as “a mind-numbing torture device made of cheap, brightly colored plastic,” has been the focus of harsh criticism. BBC and ESPN fear that it may drown out their commentators’ voices – which not necessarily must be a disadvantage. The advantages of a cheap device able to drown out others’ voices, on the other hand, are tremendous. YouTube, for example, “has added a button - in the form of a soccer ball - on its latest video player, allowing the sound of the [instrument] to play alongside any video being watched. The results can be hilarious; try watching a speech by any major politician drowned out by the relentless blasting of the plastic trumpet“ (Peace FM).
Soccer coaches blame it for degrading the performance of their team, suggesting that the French team did not refuse to listen to their coach; they simply were not able to hear him.
However, renowned ethnomusicologist Andrew Tracey finds the instrument frustrating and fascinating at the same time. Although he regrets the fact that each one has the same pitch, B flat, he believes that varying its length could create different pitches and enable the user to blow in rhythmic patterns. (Remember the alphorn?) Tracey's theory has so far fallen on deaf ears, but he really shouldn’t be surprised since even the instrument’s self-anointed inventor Saddam Maake concedes that "It's bad for the ears" (Washington Post).
But what the heck is a vuvuzela? Well, a plastic trumpet used by soccer enthusiasts. Nobody knows the word’s origin for sure, but it might come from the Zulu word for 'making a loud noise'. Maybe the vuvuzela should be incorporated in the English vocabulary, functioning as a verb that describes the common act of giving a speech without really saying anything: The speaker has been vuvuzelaing for almost an hour.