November 18 – Africa

Well, looks like today is my birthday. I have been saving this song since the start of my project, as it is one of my all-time favorite songs. So I am cranking this up to 11 as I pull up my Yacht Rock playlist.

About the song choice: Funny story about me and this song. In eighth grade, I was in the junior high jazz band playing trombone. We were entered into the 1984 UMKC Jazz Festival, the only junior high school participating in this event. Everyone else was high school or small college. Each school performed 3-4 songs for the judges, then the top four schools were invited to perform one song each at the evening concert.

One of the songs that we did that year was Africa. If you listen to the song, there is not a lot of low brass instruments used in the song, which makes this an interesting choice for a junior high jazz band, but I digress. So I and a few other trombonists were assigned to the percussion section, as there was huge need for extra drummers with this song. But what did I get to do for the performance? I played the wood block that opens and closes the song. Yes, two blocks of wood, and I opened the song for the band. No pressure.

Of course, as you can obviously tell how the story is going, our junior high band was invited to perform at the evening concert. And the one song we got to do was Africa. So my one time performing on stage at a concert was playing the wood block. A memorable night, but that was also my final performance as a percussionist.