Music in the Mountains... sing your own song

I’ve chosen this title as it’s the major theme running through my music classes at the moment.

Disappointed with the lack of English story and poem books here, I wanted to give the children the chance to write their own poem or short prose and put it to music.

I know this was going to be a challenge from the start as the only English books here are text books. Most of their everyday subjects; science, maths, health and social science, English are taught from Nepali Government education standard text books.

Had I more time here I would have ordered a selection of English books and covered them in the class, but postage here is erratic and it would take time to arrive, by which time I may have already left.

So here I am with Classes 6 and 7 giving them examples of poetry and song verse, then encouraging them to write something themselves, something from their heart, their imagination.

Although not easy to write a short poem in a language which isn’t your own, most pupils came up with a short four line verse, which we then elaborated on, padding it out and in some cases writing a chorus. I then gave the budding songwriters the choice of if they wanted to put their words to a melody, or if they wanted to keep it as spoken word and rap it to a rhythmic backing track. With a mixture of preferences, I started to put the students into groups of three or four, where they combined some of their poems, this made it easier for me to help everyone, getting round all the groups in a thirty five minute lesson.

Fortunately, last summer I attended a CPD music technology training day where I learnt how to use Garage Band and other apps for writing and recording music.

Grateful that my I’ phone comes equipped with Garage Band, I started composing with each group a suitable melody or we would listen together and choose appropriate backing tracks for raps.

The students were certainly spellbound by the miniature recording studio and the infinite choice of instruments, loops and sounds on my phone. Though many adults do have smart phones here, the children do not, which I feel makes a great difference with their attention span. They have better focus and concentration power than their Western counterparts.

This song writing project is a work in progress, next on the agenda is writing a song for the school, where the two classes will collectively work together on lyrics for the Laligurash Bright Future English School anthem. I intend to update you all with the following months’ blog on these musical developments.

For my younger students, Classes 4 and 5, the project this last week has been exploring different types of percussion instruments. Feeling restricted with the lack of rhythmic and melodic percussion instruments here at school, only madal (Nepali drum) and chime bars (which I brought from UK) I went into the jungle behind the school for inspiration…and I found it in abundance ! Bamboo !

For those of you who remember the scene where Dick Van Dyke sings “Me ol’ bamboo” in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and a multitude of street performers tapping each other with bamboo sticks, the bamboo instrument I constructed is vaguely along those lines but not as cheesy or painful !

In the bamboo forest I found six or seven different lengths and widths of dead bamboo which I made various journeys to take back to school. I then watched several you tube videos about how to make “Bamboo Slit Drums or Idiophones”. I marked out the lengths of the slits on each segment of bamboo.

Luckily, I didn’t have to use a saw, as just below the school there is a house being built, and one of the teachers here, Prakasa, asked the foreman if he could cut out the slits with his angle grinder. He told us to come after five, when their work day had finished. Prakasa and I went back with the bamboo in the evening and the foreman cut out all the slits on every piece in a matter of minutes.

Next day, I assembled the bamboo on the tables in the classroom, I tried the “instrument” out, quite gingerly. Suddenly I heard, “What’s that ? Is that a type of game ? “ In the room, chatting one of the teachers, was a young guy taking an avid interest in the bamboo. I explained it was for my music lesson, a new percussion instrument. He immediately wanted to have a go, I gave him the beaters and he played the most elaborate of rhythms and making up a short melody using the lengths and segments of bamboo to ring out their different tonalities.

When he had finished he told me that he was a musician and played the Madal. I asked him if he would stay for my first lesson and give a demonstration to the students.

He willingly obliged and the class were mesmerised with his rhythmic performance, he then invited people up to play with him and although shy at first one by one the students took a turn on the “ bamboo slit drum”.

Each pupil that day had a go on the new bamboo instrument, solo or in pairs, it was really uplifting to see how much fun and enjoyment they received from an instrument constructed out of waste material which was found in two minutes walk away in the back yard jungle !

I have since improved on the model, finding that on the wooden table the bamboo sticks were restricted in resonating fully, they needed to be hanging off a structure. In my room, there was a “Nepali Wardrobe” a wooden, frame construction which allows clothes to be draped over it. Removing my clothes first (!), I transported the frame to my classroom, I next set to work in hanging the bamboo in various order of size off the frame. The resonating result was infinitely better, and the bamboo slit drum even looked more professional.

The making of this instrument did feel vaguely reminiscent of the “Sound of Music”, the scene where Maria makes the children clothes out of the old curtains of her room when Captain Von Trapp is away one weekend. I have to admit that the School Principal is away at the moment, and I have no idea how he will react when he finds out that the wardrobe in my room has been made into a musical instrument for the schoolchildren …. Please tune into the next blog to find out….

This last month also saw the arrival of twenty Chinese volunteer students from Ningbo University, China which were shoehorned into the school’s modest accommodation facilities. They were here in total five days (It took them a day to arrive here and a day to return to China), three days in total volunteering. This is quite common as the Chinese Universities often offer short “social programmes” to their students. I made friends with some of them, who all had English names, like Flora, Wendy, Linda, Allan and Rocky. We ate together and they taught me how to play “Uno” after dinner.

On their last evening it was a beautifully, clear night where all the stars in the heavens were lain before us as we looked up. We found the perfect place for star gazing and the Chinese with their state of the art cameras and smart phones took the most incredible photos of the night sky and lights of the small, rural towns on the opposite side of the mountain, which I have included here.

Since the Chinese have left I have been revelling in staring up at the stars, identifying constellations. this is definitely something I’ll miss when I leave here, as in the cities the light pollution makes this stella skyscape invisible. Yet another nudge from the universe to appreciate the multitude of magical present moments here.

Converted Nepali wardrobe into musical instrument; bamboo slit drums !