Ninth Week

On Wednesday morning we had to go to the city of Tuzla to collect the scenery (a miniature pirate ship) for the upcoming show. This meant a long detour on our journey to Srebrenica so we had to leave Sarajevo at 7.00am. Much to our disappointment we arrived in Srebrenica too late to visit the Kindergarten and so we went straight to Potočari. We continued our work on pirates from last week - Hannah again led the pirate warm-up (“climb the rigging!” etc.) and the pirate dance game. We sang the song we had introduced to them last week (15 men/Petnaest ljudi) and then spent some time turning the lyrics from last week into a song. It turned out great and it goes like this...

The lyrics mean...

What does a pirate look like?
Why? Why? Why?
He has scary teeth, voice and black beard.

What do pirates do?
What? What? What?
They steal gold, money and silver.

When a pirate relaxes...
They drink, gamble and play the accordion.

[Captain Pugwash theme plays and everyone dances]

Although it has still not been confirmed, we are very hopeful that the Potočari group will be able to do a small performance of their compositions and other favourite songs at the Children’s Music Theatre show next week. Hopefully this can be arranged as it would be the perfect opportunity for the group to show off their hard work from 10 weeks’ worth of workshops.

In Skelani this week our “Interkulturalno Muzičko Putovanje” took us to Scotland! We introduced them to our country with a little slide-show of Scottish landmarks – we were surprised by how intrigued they were by the pictures! We sang “Donald, where’s yer troosers?” (or Donald, vhers jer truzers? in Bosnian phonetics!). This is a comedy Scottish song about wearing a kilt, and the group seemed to find it hilarious! We then talked a bit more technically about Scottish music, with Hannah playing a strathspey on the viola to demonstrate the feature known as a “scotch snap”. The next verse of the Jednog dana... song drew on this idiom. Again the group enjoyed writing lyrics – this time based on our discussion about Scotland (pipers, kilts, whiskey etc.). Next week we plan to record this group composition, along with one of their favourite songs from the last two sessions (Makedonsko devojće), to make a CD as a memento of our work together.

Eighth Week

We decided to be ambitious with our plans for the next three weeks, and to begin new mini-projects in both Potočari and Skelani. We were delighted to learn this week that it should be possible for the Potočari kids to do a short performance of their work before the “Children’s Music Theatre” show on 12^th December (see event above). For this reason we chose “Pirates” as the theme of their new project, to get them into the spirit of the show. We devised a series of pirate and nautical themed activities including a physical warm-up in which we called out pirate commands which the children responded to with corresponding actions (“climb the rigging!/penjite se po mieže!”, “haul in the anchor!/puvocite sidro!” etc.). We used other pirate related games, including a listening activity in which the children had to learn 3 different pirate dances, each of which went with a different pirate tune (played by Lewis and I). We also sang a pirate song (in Bosnian) roughly translated from the famous “15 men on a dead man’s chest” shanty from RL Stevenson’s Treasure Island. The final part of our workshop focused on writing pirate lyrics, in two groups, which we will make into songs next week. The children worked very well today. We were very impressed by their concentration levels and enthusiasm for this new project, and we are very much looking forward to the last two weeks. We were also very pleased to be able to lead the majority of this workshop in Bosnian for the first time. We are very grateful to our tutor (Ms Mirzana Pasič) for helping with our pirate-related vocabulary.

In Skelani, our new mini-project is called “Interkulturalno Muzičko Putovanje” – the “Intercultural Musical Journey”. Our aim for the next three weeks is to sing a variety of songs from different countries and musical traditions. We would like the kids to get a feel for the musical characteristics of diverse musical styles and to learn a little about other countries and cultures. We have devised and presented this theme to the kids as an imaginary journey by river/sea, starting from Skelani, and travelling first to neighbouring Balkan countries, then further afield (in later weeks). Using a large map of the Balkans as a prop, this week we ‘visited’ and sang songs from Croatia (Sve ptičice iz gore) and Macedonia (Makedonsko devojće), and performed a traditional tune from Romania. (We also made an impromptu stop in Serbia – on the request of one of the kids!) We have suggested that they bring us suggestions of Bosnian songs they would like to sing/perform in following two weeks. During the second half of the session we composed as a group, the first verse of a new song (below), describing and drawing on the musical cultures we experienced today. We hope to add further verses in the following weeks, in contrasting musical styles.

Seventh Week

There were no children at the Kindergarten again this week, so we arrived early in Potočari – in time for a little informal sing-song in the playground. In the workshop the group was in high spirits as usual but they all worked well in circle-based activities. They were particularly attentive during variants on “pass the clap” using the small percussion instruments, and really enjoyed reprising many of the songs they learned in previous weeks (Abutange-vu, Tingalayo and Tekelelo meria) which they sang and acted with gusto.

The Music Theatre rehearsal this week brought together the music section (led by Toni and helped by us) and the dance section (led by Jana Dukanovic), and things are starting to look very promising for the show in a few weeks. We now know where the music we have been preparing will fit into the story and the dancers tried their choreography to our group playing live for the first time.

The school in Skelani was also closed this week due to a Serbian day of mourning, but we are looking forward to resuming work there next week.

This was Sarah’s last week with the project as she has unfortunately had to return to the UK for family reasons.