The kazoo has a rich history that crosses centuries and oceans.

Kazooist Rick Hubbard traces it to tribal Africa, where shamans used similar devices to disguise their voices during elaborately costumed rituals.

According to a 1996 article in Grit magazine, the American version of the instrument was introduced at the 1852 Georgia State Fair. Created by African-American performer Alabama Vest and German clock maker Thaddeus von Clegg, it was called the ‘‘Down South Submarine.’’

As we know it today. the kazoo was born in 1919, when inventor and sheet-metal craftsman Michael J. McIntyre filed a patent application for a ‘‘musical toy or instrument.’’ He was soon turning out kazoos in his Eden, N.Y., shop. The business has changed hands a half-dozen times since, but the Original American Kazoo Co. is still in Eden.

The metal instruments made by that company are considered the Stradivariuses, or at least the Fenders, of the kazoo world. The plastic ones to be handed out at Oktoberfest come from Hohner, best known for their harmonicas.

According to Barbara Stewart’s How to Kazoo ($6.95, including a Hohner kazoo; Workman Publishing), the third major kazoo manufacturer is the Trophy Music Co. of Cleveland, which also makes the Hum-a-Zoo. Disc-shaped Hum-a-Zoos are considered safer for toddlers and very young children, who may be injured should they fall while running and playing the more typical submarine-shape kazoos.

Kazoos have a long history in jazz. One early group, the Mound City Blue Blowers (which included jazz guitar pioneer Eddie Lang), featured comb-and-tissue paper kazoo solos. The Memphis Jug Band and Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers, mainstays of the thriving Beale Street jug band scene of the 1920s, prominently featured kazoos. Bluesman Tampa Red, writer of such standards as ‘‘It Hurts Me Too,’’ played both guitar and kazoo on his recordings of the ’30s and ’40s.

But it was the ’60s folk revival that brought kazoos back into vogue, adopted by such revivalist groups as the Rooftop Singers (who scored one of the biggest hits of 1963 with Mr. Cannon’s ‘‘Walk Right In,’’ and the Jim Kweskin Jug Band.

During Mr. Hubbard’s days playing college coffeehouses in the ’70s, one of his showstoppers was a kazoo version of the synthesizer solo on Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s ‘‘Lucky Man.’’

Kazoos have turned up on records by some top rock acts. Ringo Starr’s version of ‘‘You’re Sixteen’’ had kazoo on it. Eric Clapton had one on ‘‘San Francisco Bay Blues’’ on From the Cradle. The Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix both used kazoos.

‘‘A lot of people, while putting down the kazoo, don’t realize how far-reaching the kazoo is in popular music,’’ asserts Mr. Hubbard.

But pop’s top kazooist, he states, is the Starland Vocal Band’s Taffy Danoff. Long before 1976 and her group’s kazoo-less hit, ‘‘Afternoon Delight,’’ Taffy and her husband Bill performed as a folk duo.

‘‘He played guitar and she played kazoo,’’ recalls Mr. Hubbard. ‘‘Man, she played it. That’s the best kazoo playing I still have ever heard in my life.’’