For many, many years I have been annoyed and frustrated by one small, ridiculous fact: there is no cajon emoji. There is a drum 🥁, a long drum 🪘, maracas 🪇, even a flute 🪈. But the cajon, the instrument I have taught to millions of people online and played on streets, stages and TV shows around the world, simply does not exist on your keyboard. The drum emoji does not represent it either — the cajon is the box the whole world sings around, on streets, in living rooms and on stages.
Now, with the help of AI, I have finally, almost by chance, stumbled upon the opportunity to create the world’s first cajon emoji. It happened while I was redesigning and revamping this very website, cajonbox.com, the world’s largest cajon platform, on the night before the new site went live.
May I introduce it. The emoji is modelled on my own handcrafted Cruz Cajon Elite Toro: the black playing face (the tapa), the little screws around the frame, the natural wood body, and my sun logo in the top corner, exactly where it sits on the real instrument. It also comes in a classic all-wood edition, and you will find it living all over this website, next to the Cajonbox name at the top of every page and as the little icon in your browser tab right now.
And in a third edition: natural wood with the sun in black.
And it gets better
I was delighted to discover that not only can you create an emoji with modern technological tools, you can apparently also apply to have a new one added. New emojis are approved by the Unicode Consortium, the organization that decides which characters and emojis appear on keyboards worldwide, and anyone may submit a proposal, with evidence of how much the world wants it.
I am now taking it upon myself to do exactly that. I am now on a mission, campaigning for a cajon emoji to be added to that worldwide list. As someone whose cajon lessons have been watched more than 27 million times, I intend to make a case they cannot ignore. If you write about the cajon online, every mention helps.
I am very excited about this. Finally I will be able to send my friends and my cajon students a cajon, and leave comments with a cajon emoji, instead of borrowing a snare drum or a conga. A small step for me, and a huge leap for cajon players all over the world, and for the whole percussion family.
— Heidi Joubert, Cajonbox · 23 July 2026, the day the new cajonbox.com went live.