After a
slow start in which many lessons were cancelled, things have started moving
very quickly. The One World College of Music runs as a musical community
in which students are encouraged to spend quite a lot of time participating in
musical activities aside from just instrumental lessons. Musical
ensembles and bands can use the college as a space to rehearse and workshops
are taken in which they get to sample instruments other than their own, learn
and improve their theoretical knowledge and hone in on specific elements such
as rhythm or songwriting. This idea of a community extends to the staff
as well who have weekly meetings in which they develop ideas and share teaching
methods in order to develop and progress themselves as teachers.
Being
assigned ensembles to work with already within a week of arriving, I found my
lack of knowledge of instruments other than my own (predominantly piano, flute,
voice) to be a burden and upon discussing this in a staff meeting we agreed
that it would be beneficial for the teachers to teach each other so that we all
have a basic theoretical and practical understanding of as many instruments as
possible. Thus, I have found myself being given drum and guitar lessons
which comes in very handy for the more creative workshops in which I can
instruct real beginners on how to play basic drum riffs and how to find various
chord positions on the guitar. I think this environment in which
everybody is learning gives more motivation to the teachers and, through making
everybody both student and teacher, dismantles a lot of potential hierarchies.
I have
taken on the challenge of organizing and carrying out a ‘launch party’ for the
school, which only opened this year. The aim is to hold an open evening
where workshops are conducted by various teachers and students enabling
potential students, parents and the general public to attend and participate to
see what actually goes on here. Following this, a concert will be held,
showcasing various ensembles and concluding with a choir concert.
I have
been taking choirs every Thursday evening and Saturday afternoon since we
decided to go ahead and turn the idea into a reality and, with many of the
students struggling to pitch notes of the Western scales, this has certainly
been a challenging experience...
In
addition to working at the One World College of Music, Rosie and I have been
teaching three mornings a week to the children from the Sankalp school - an NGO
run school which runs on volunteers and donations. This provides an interesting variation in our
teaching and our main duties, as requested by the head teacher, are to ‘train
them fully in preparation for a singing concert.’ Thus, we set about teaching them ‘My Bonnie
Lies over the Ocean’ and have recently moved on to a couple of rounds and
trying to explain the difference between a crochet and a quaver.
I have
agreed amongst the children that I will teach them music if they teach me Hindi
and so, every so often one of them whispers something in my ear - for example 'aapko
class kaisa laga' means 'how did you feel the class went?'. When I pronounce it
wrong with my English tongue, they all laugh uproariously!
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