Dan the sax maestro
After watching the Malawi Army brass band during parades in Lilongwe, little boys used to go back home and form their own ‘bands’. It is easy to imagine the little boys, with drums made from tins, ‘police caps’ from cartons and empty Chibuku packets making up for boots, walking about the streets of their township and doing renditions of such popular songs as Ku Chichiri Sindidzapita . No one could imagine that one of those little boys, playing songs just for the fun of it, was making the first steps in a long journey to music. No one could ever imagine that the little boy who was so much given to playing a ‘trumpet’ made from a pawpaw stalk would grow into one of the greatest saxophone players to come out of the Malawi soil. Dan Sibale looks back at those early years with a tinge of nostalgia on his forehead: "We used to have fun watching the Army band and we formed our own band and mimicked the music they played. I played no other instruments than the trumpet made from a pawpaw s...