Zen Music Moment
It was a cold night and the Trojans had just won a close game. We came off the field sweating and elated and the heat from our bodies rose into the dark air like clouds of steam.
The locker room was a celebratory wash of testosterone, slapping backs, high fives, and yelling and hooting! Football was a big deal in Kiefer Oklahoma. Everyone knew whom the players were and when you were downtown, old folks were likely to ask what things looked like for this week’s game.
This evening in the locked room had something special to it. One of the linemen, a kid named Ricky Burleson, outgoing and bigger than life, stood up on the bench and started chanting “I Just Wanna Celebrate!” Those are the opening lines to Rare Earth’s song “I Just Wanna Celebrate!”
This big bunch of macho football players all responded, including myself, with a loud “Yeah! Yeah!” and Ricky carried on with “Another day of Living!” and we responded again evolving into a chant of “I Just Wanna Celebrate!”
A lot of people don’t realize how closely football and music are related. It is a rhythm and a beat. It is the loud staccato of pads rattling against each other and light beat of fleet feet of the receiver as he rushes down field to gather in a perfectly timed pass. Football is music in a physical form, and it was an instrument I could play.
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