Amid the sounds of floodwaters and debris removal in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, you might hear a lone piano if you listen closely enough.
As cleanup efforts continue throughout the state, 16-year-old Mark Chasuk lent his help to friends struggling to remove everything from their home. They salvaged what could be saved and threw away what was destroyed.
On the sidewalk outside the front of the house sat an upright piano, clearly damaged by 4 feet of flooding. For Chasuk, a pianist, there was only one way to test it — to play it.
“I was wondering if it was still playable,” he told CNN affiliate WBRZ. “I went up to it, and I sat down and I started banging out the piece.”
Chasuk began to play Albert Pieczonka’s “Tarantella.”
Friend John White posted video of the moment to Facebook, where millions have watched it since the weekend.
The friends who owned the piano, Chasuk said, lost everything, but still managed to joke that the piano “needs a tuneup.”
“I was on Facebook,” Chasuk told WBRZ, “and seeing the people that reshared it, and reading all they said about how uplifting it was and how it kind of inspired them.”
Tuneup or not, the video is a bright spot for a community that is just beginning to dig out from record floods.
