KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) — For a Delaware woman and a Florida man, past mastery of the trombone was the secret to winning top honors in Key West’s annual Conch Shell Blowing Contest on Saturday.
Jayne Challman, a Rehoboth Beach, Delaware woman who blew an excerpt from Aram Khachaturian’s "Sabre Dance" to win the women’s division, said playing the trombone as a child taught her the puckering and blowing techniques required for successful "conch honking."
As well as winning the contest, her shell-playing shells have a practical application.
"I have a tiki bar at home, and so when it’s time for happy hour, I let everybody know in the neighborhood," Challman said. "I give a happy hour blow on the conch shell."
Summerland Key, Florida resident Corey Fritz earned the men’s division victory by playing an intricate original composition on a huge polished conch shell from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
"Today I played a piece that I wrote on the conch shell myself, so I guess it was the debut. It was the world premiere," said Fritz, a professional pianist and trombonist who earned applause from several hundred spectators.
Other winners included Key West’s Kyla Bender, 12, who blew her conch shell while wearing a back feathered tutu and conch-shell tiara.
Judges evaluated entrants on the quality, duration, loudness and novelty of sounds they produced.
The contest attracted entrants including a costumed Santa Claus impersonator and a group of women in pink-feather boas who called themselves the Key West Classical Conch Blowhards.
The fluted, pink-lined conch shell, a symbol of the Florida Keys, has been used as a signaling device in the islands for centuries.
The Keys island chain is also known as the Conch Republic.
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