Fifth Week

Lewis and I returned to the school in Dobrinja this week for two workshops on Monday and Tuesday. Again, the groups we worked with were very enthusiastic and a lot of fun was had by everyone. After physical and vocal warm-ups we encouraged the kids to do a lot of singing. We taught them Ogendawa, a Ugandan song the title/lyrics of which translate as 'Where are you going?' or 'Gdje idiš?' in Bosnian. We also introduced them to the morski konj song from our workshop in Skelani last week. We added rhythms, played by the kids on small percussion, to the latter. We gave the rhythms accompanying Bosnian phrases which the kids could repeat whilst playing the instruments and we found this to be a successful method of making relatively complex rhythmic patterns easier to learn and remember.

In Srebrenica this week the Kindergarten session was once again very successful. Toni seems to have a limitless repetoire of fun and engaging musical games which stimulate the children's motor and memory skills as well as promoting their musicality.

Potočari was far more productive this week. We worked with a smaller group, of more familiar faces, and did a non stop programme of energetic musical games, focus/listening exercises and singing. We taught the group two new songs in Bosnian - Tingaleo (from the Carribean) and Abetange Vu (from Africa) which the children greatly enjoyed. This group can be very hyperactive, but we were pleased that generally the children listened very well this week, responding particularly well to a focus game we made up. In this the children passed percussion instruments (shakers, bells etc.) round a circle in time to a medley of waltzes from around the world(!) played by Lewis and I. When the music stopped they had to stop passing and make their instruments completely silent. We wouldn't resume playing until there was complete silence. They improved markedly in the short space of time it took to play this game.

The music theatre workshop went ahead much like last week, this time with three boys instead of two. We worked on developing and practising the music for the monster scene, as described last week.


In Skelani we reprised the Brazilian song from last week, with added rhythms, and also taught them Ogendawa, as in Dobrinja. Our main activity this week was a compositional task in which two groups selected themes and musical concepts from a choice of mystery cards. They had to follow the instructions given on these cards (e.g. 'There arose a great storm...', 'add oboe', 'start loud and get quieter') in order to make up and perform a short piece of music. The idea was to get the kids to invent the music themselves with minimal direction from us, but using the instructions as compositional guides. This went well with both groups guessing/discussing the themes of each other's music.