“My legs began to shake and my fingers cramped. My lips started bleeding, but I told myself not to stop playing”: Nigerian musician tells what it’s like to play the trumpet non-stop for 25 hours

A Nigerian musician has spoken about his record for the longest uninterrupted trumpet performance, which he acheived earlier this year.

Joshua Olusanya teaches music at an International school in Abuja and has written about his World Record attempt in the Guardian today. He played the instrument for 25 hours straight under very strict Guinness Book Of Records rules – Olusanya could only take a five-minute break each hour, and improvisation was not allowed. Soloing and jamming were also banned – he could only play melodies.

Olusanya’s first attempt saw him disqualified for the heinous crime of taking a sip of water outside the permitted time window. No matter. He tried again. “This time, I pushed past everything: the chapped lips, trembling legs, the fatigue,” he wrote.

“I played classical pieces, Afrobeat songs, jazz and pop that kept the momentum going. I played George Michael’s Careless Whisper, Tyla’s hit single Water, and songs from Nigeria’s beloved Fela Kuti. It was relentless. But I love the trumpet, and that love carried me through.”

GUINNESS WORLD RECORD LONGEST MARATHON PLAYING TRUMPET - YouTube

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It was a feat of pure guts and determination. “Around hour five, I felt the burn in my lips and shoulders, but the rhythm kept me going. As time went on, my legs began to shake and my fingers cramped. I had to keep switching between sitting and standing to avoid my body giving out. My lips started bleeding, but I told myself not to stop playing until the very last note.”

“When I finally stopped, I had been playing for 25 hours and 30 minutes straight. It was the best feeling I’ve ever had. I was so excited – not just for myself, but for all the people who helped me pull this off.”

Olusanya’s trumpet marathon isn’t the longest gig though. In 2017 Pablo Alvarez of the Los Angeles hip hop outfit Good Bison completed the longest freestyle rap marathon. Somehow he spent 25 hours and 56 minutes rhyming, until his tonsils were enflamed and his nose clogged up. But even that feat was dwarfed by the longest guitar performance – in 2011, David Browne played continuously for 114 hours in a Dublin pub. That’s five whole days of strumming, picking and shredding.

But the endurance champion of them all has to be Kuzhalmannam Ramakrishnan, an Indian percussionist and teacher who back in 2009, performed on hand drums for 501 hours, or 21 days, between July 5 to the 26 that year; a feat that makes you feel weary even thinking about it.