May 23rd, 2012 
Emily 
Have you ever heard a song on the radio, or at a restaurant, which immediately takes you back to a different time or place? Music has helped me through many travel adventures, and when I hear certain songs today, I am transported to a vivid memory of some other place.
Cape Town, South Africa
My favorite memory song is “Africa” by the band Toto. I studied abroad in South Africa, and my classmates and I were super cheesy. We blasted “Africa” on the sound system of our heavy-duty safari truck when we went to the Kalahari desert for spring break. Embarrassing, yes. But that song will always remind me of rafting on the Orange River and getting stranded in some desert camp after our truck broke down.
Sweatin’ it out on the trotro.
A bus stop in Ghana
When I was in Ghana, my friends and I often took the steamy hot, crowded mini-buses called trotros to various destinations around the country. On most of these trips, I stared out the window and listened to the Counting Crows on my ipod. Counting Crows may sound strange, especially considering the fact that West Africa has awesome music, but I guess I was grabbing on to something familiar in a place where nothing else was. Now when I hear “Rain King” or “Long December,” I remember buying fried plantains and peanuts from the window of the trotro while we were stopped at a traffic light.
Hanging out at the beach.
My view from the beach.
In Vanuatu (a country in the South Pacific), my host family and I would walk to a nearby beach almost every Saturday afternoon. My younger “siblings” would play in the water and I would listen to Bedouin Soundclash and write letters on my thin air mail stationery. I actually can barely stand to listen to Bedouin Soundclash any more because that time of my life was really lonely and depressing and the music pulls me back there.
Even when I was younger, my family often played a soundtrack over and over again on various trips. I will forever associate Natalie Imbruglia with driving along the Oregon coastline because my dad bought “Torn” right before the trip and our rental car had a cd player. (Sorry Dad, I totally just outed you as a Natalie Imbruglia fan…)
What are your favorite music memories?
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I had a 45-60 minute commute to class when I lived on the Lower East Side. I had just received my first ipod and I always walked to the Bleecker Street 6 train listening to FrouFrou or Fiona Apple. Whenever I hear those songs now, I flash back to that walk and my long purple wool coat that was SO not NYC.
That’s awesome! Do you still have that coat?
I am finally checking out your blog! I had to comment on this entry because I LOVE Counting Crows and in high school my friends always gave me a hard time because they are not very punk rock.
My vivid memory associated with that is being in Guatemala and hiking up to a village where we were developing an eco-lodge, and some student volunteers from Harvard law were there on a service project. One of those guys was the biggest Counting Crows fan in the world (and otherwise kind of an ass) and he kept playing different live versions of the same songs on his discman (!) and pointing out the subtle differences. He called all the band members by their first names. This went for a four hour sweaty hike up a mountain through the jungle.
That’s so funny. I wonder if the good music of Counting Crows outweighed the annoyance of having that guy analyze every song. What a great memory!
Hmm… my overarching sense memory is of annoyance at that guy, so I guess that was the main factor. Although months later he did care package me a bunch of CDs of those bootleg live recordings, so maybe I shouldn’t be holding a grudge so many years later.
African Queen by 2 face…the guys in the internet cafee used to sing it to me and change the words to american queen:) Dakar, Senegal 2006
I remember that song, that’s awesome! I would love to go to Senegal, hope you had an awesome trip.