The internet can bring many forgotten pop culture moments back to prominence.
Whether old movies, sporting moments or television shows, Youtube and TikTok can be conduits for giving new life to those things which were once popular.
In 2018, Toto’s song Africa saw itself reinvigorated in popularity thanks to Youtube and other social media sites.
The song has still maintained that popularity into 2023. In 2021, it was reported that the song had crossed to 1 Billion listens on Spotify. That number is now at almost 1.4 Billion.
What many people do not know is the Catholic inspiration behind the song.
Singer and songwriter David Paich had attended Catholic school as a child. There, he had often heard his teachers recount of their time as missionaries deep in the heart of Africa.
Paich has spoken of the impact that this education has had on him, saying:
I came to know Christ when I was very young. I was raised Catholic, baptised, confirmed was an altarboy, went to Catholic schools. My family is Catholic, my daughter goes to church every Sunday. My father was a big believer in the fact that there is a connection between music and God and that music is a gift that we are given. I definitely think that God has had a great influence on my writing. Some of the things that I have created, like Africa and Rosanna, are creations that only could hace come from God, as on my own, I do not believe I could have done it.
Toto guitarist Steve Lukather has said of the composition that it was the influence of religious brothers in the school that influenced the song:
It’s just that Paich went to an all-boys Catholic school and was enamored by stories the brothers told about their travels to Africa and all this stuff.
Paich himself has said:
One of the reasons I was in a rock band was to see the world. As a kid, I’d always been fascinated by Africa. I loved movies about Dr Livingstone and missionaries. I went to an all-boys Catholic school and a lot of the teachers had done missionary work in Africa. They told me how they would bless the villagers, their Bibles, their books, their crops and, when it rained, they’d bless the rain. That’s where the hook line – “I bless the rains down in Africa” – came from.
They said loneliness and celibacy were the hardest things about life out there. Some of them never made it into the priesthood because they needed companionship. So I wrote about a person flying in to meet a lonely missionary. It’s a romanticised love story about Africa, based on how I’d always imagined it. The descriptions of its beautiful landscape came from what I’d read in National Geographic.
