Lutheran Church wedding band

Lutheran Church wedding band
Originally uploaded by arutgers03

What a strange and wonderful turn of events today! Just goes to show how far learning a little Swahili can take you. People's indifferent looks ("oh another tourist") change to smiles the moment you say one word in Swahili. I've found "Mambo!" works wonders-- it's a slang greeting.

After we finished seeing the National Museum, we happened upon the Holiday Inn. I went in and asked them if they had a piano I could practice on. They didn't but the gentleman there sent us to the Lutheran Church. We wandered the long way over, walking along the coast (my first glimpse of the Indian Ocean), to eventually find the Lutheran compound. It didn't look promising at first, but we met a nice young man named Raphael, who, after going to check on the situation, told me they had a piano. Bruce went for a walk while I was to practice.

Raphael and I talked a little, and he was excited to hear whatever Swahili I could muster. We went in after a little while to find that there was no piano but a couple of organs and some digital keyboards. Oh well, but better than nothing. I got to practicing for a bit, but I had a crowd around me so it was a bit difficult to concentrate. They told me there was going to be a wedding, and I felt a little odd intruding in the sanctuary. However, that feeling was not shared by anyone else. We certainly don't share the same cultural norms of what's intrusion and what's not.

So anyway, after I practiced a little bit. Some of the crowd started playing guitars and one gentleman came over to play the keyboard. I stepped aside to watch them jam on their four-chord progression. Some others started improvising vocal lines. This was some moving church music. I started playing a bass line on the keyboard and eventually the guy who was playing treble had me take over and he started singing too. This was some really fun, really unexpected improv.

To further the sense of the unexpected, The wedding processional happened while we were playing. When we stopped, i went with Raphael to a pew to witness the wedding. After each important step of the wedding, the trumpets would blare, the drums would roll, and everyone would cheer. I never would expect such outbursts. And at a Lutheran church to boot!

I later saw that the processional band consisted of two drums, a few trombones, and a whole slew of trumpets. It was an awesome noise. A truly joyous music for a joyous occasion-- what I imagine they might play in New Orleans. It turned out that on Saturday's they have one processional after another, since the weddings are back-to-back all day. But in between, I got some good practicing in, not that my practicing is what made this day special.