Third Week

Hello!

On the Wednesday of our third week of workshops, things went in general very well. Our first session of the day, in the kindergarten, was full of fun and happiness - we sang songs together (including the "Beauty" song composed last week) and played games involving a lot of music and movement. It seems the little boys and girls really love to dance, and they responded especially well to some Scottish ceilidh tunes which Hannah and I played to round off our activities (on the viola and melodica, respectively).

Our second session of the day was, as usual, in the Potočari school. After some physical and vocal warm-ups, we split into two groups to work on the two sets of lyrics that had been created the previous week. Hannah and I helped our group to turn the words into a song. We were delighted to see how much enthusiasm the kids had for the composing process, and how proud they were of the final product, which turned out as a calm and melancholy song about a hideous beast...

On je strašan jer ima oči kao vuk
He is scary because he has the eyes of a wolf

On je veliki jer ima glavu kao medo
He is big because he has the head of a bear
On je ružan jer ima zube kao krokodil
He is ugly because he has the teeth of a crocodile
Crno-bela zver, crno-bela zver
Black-white beast, black-white beast

Rather than writing a song, Sarah and Toni's group (which was generally a slightly older age-group) focussed on percussion - building up rhythms over which the lyrics were chanted. The workshop finished with each group performing their new piece to the other.

In preparation for our Thursday workshop in Skelani, I had transcribed our most successful improvisation from the conducting activity. We performed this "polished" version to the group, and they seemed to like it! We're planning to develop this piece further over the coming weeks, primarily by getting the group to write percussion parts for themselves to play. To this end, Toni gave an intensive introduction to his hand percussion - djembe, bongos, darbuka, sabar etc. - and then got the group playing simple patterns together to steady pulse. To finish we played a game with the percussion - splitting the group into pairs and asking each pair to come up with a rhythmic pattern based on a particular emotion (happy, sad, fear, love, anger etc.). Each pair played their little pattern to the group and then we asked the pairs to combine their patterns to find out what it sounds like to be happy and in love, or sad and fearful.

* * * * * * * * * *

Unfortunately we learned on Thursday that the theme of the Children's Music Theatre performance has been changed from "Beauty and the Beast" to a pirate story called "Captain John Peoplefox". This was rather frustrating, because all of our composition work so far with the various groups, as well as out plans for the coming weeks, was based around "Beauty and the Beast". It is possible that Beauty and the Beast may survive in some form, although we need some time to discuss whether this is feasible and reconsider our position. Hopefully we will have time to alter our plans, as the Christmas show would be the perfect opportunity to bring the various groups from the region together to share their songs etc.