Well I’m glad to say I’m rid of it now – but on Saturday both Ryan and I had to suppress ill-feelings and, stomachs unstable to say the least, conduct our first workshop of trip; the topic of this blog post.
This workshop was planned before we even got here; we were told about it on the first day (“We’ve got a date for a workshop that you’ll take. You plan what you’re going to do with that.” “OK.”) So we got planning, it was only later that Hyacinth (one of the co-ordinators of the music school) told us that she was expecting over one hundred children in both the morning and afternoon workshops.
We racked our brains, thinking, what we could do with 100 kids. Could we even control that many children in one session, let alone engage them for a whole 3 hours?! We picked our title: “Discover Music”, and our aim: to cover the main aspects of music (listening/performing/creating) whilst introducing them to some key western music through listening.
As the workshop got closer, we got various and rather varying estimates of how many people would actually attend... “30 children”, “200 people” (we were a little taken aback when we heard that one), “50, children and parents”. In the end (perhaps due to the fact it was raining) it was probably around 50 people (both children and adults) for the morning workshop and about 30 (mainly adults) in the afternoon. We were pleased that we were not overloaded with people, and the numbers enabled us to have a decent level of discussion and interaction throughout the workshop, something that we were worried would be missing if over a hundred turned up.
We started in typical Indian fashion: late. The microphones were still being set up, people were still arriving, and we were still trying to settle our stomachs from churning. A few simple warm up games to wake people up a little; clapping, shaking, beats etc. – and then on to the listening. Now, we were expecting children, and so we had written down in our little plan to play some dance music
and we’d ask the children to dance to it (and talk about why it made us dance later). But trying to get a whole room of people including adults and teenagers, well you’ve just got to make a fool out of yourself. So we did that. They danced a little bit. A very little bit.
Ok, so the dancing wasn’t for them (although it has proved popular in some of classroom activities in the school – but more on that at a later date), so we sat down and talked about the music - what it made us feel like, what we imagined, why it made us want to dance (or perhaps, why it might!), did we like it, what instruments we could hear. There were some interesting discussions, and a lot of them even said they liked Webern’s “5 Pieces for Orchestra” when we played that to them – a nice surprise, given I’m used to people’s reactions at home!
On to the performing. We wanted to give some of the children from the music school the opportunity to perform as it seems they don’t often get the chance to in front of a larger audience. So we had performances on the guitar, keyboard and violin. We talked about nerves, how the audience is there for you not against you, and about getting emotions and ideas across to the audience and how that’s really the key to performing – not the notes. Ryan gave a performance of a contemporary piece “In Memoriam of the people of Chernobyl” by Larysa Kuzmenko to address the idea that when we say ‘emotive’ we don’t always mean just gushing with longing and sadness (as ‘emotive’ sometimes has connotations of) but that it can the whole range of emotions that we can feel.
We then also wanted to push the idea of ensembles, and so during the week before the workshop we had invited Laksmi, a guitarist and singer, to form a little band. She had written her own song – and hopefully seeing a band play together before them could have showed a lot of the audience how easy it is to get together and just play music together. And for Laksmi, this was a great ‘throw in the deep end’ of performing, which she really enjoyed – and I’ve heard rumour that she and her friend are to try and form their own band now.
We wanted the workshop to be an active one, and so we thought that what better way to explore the creative side of music by actually creating a piece all together! Ryan and I had planned out a few things before the workshop so that we knew that it would actually work: we chose our inspiration – Rain (of which there is currently a lot of in India) – and we composed a simple theme to work with (keeping it pentatonic for ease of singing en masse). We split into two groups, Ryan took the rhythmic group and I took the melody/vocal group and, based on our plans, we created a ‘rain song’ in ternary form ‘calm-storm-calm’. The folk got into it! The singers offered their own ideas; we had chants in the storm, Indian vocal improvising and the drummers came up with their own rhythms for the storm to keep it pace-y, whilst the rest of the rhythm group used body percussion and created sound effects in the outer sections.
It was a nice finale to the workshop, leaving on a high and incorporating everything that we had touched on beforehand. And so, without further ado, I give you the “Rain Song” ...
Till next time,
Aaron
X
(P.S - Oh, and we must tell you about the piano tuner... the only(ish) piano tuner in India! But that'll have to wait for another time.)
(Wednesday 21 July 2010)
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ReplyDeleteheyya, the workshop was awesome! N btw, congrats on adapting so well to Indian fashion :)
ReplyDeleteHi! Well done! The song is great! VERY good work! J
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