It was a week FILLED with MUSIC. We sang, danced, lived, ate and drank music. Music was in air, music is still in air. Deepa opened up the world of Kabir, music, instruments, chanting, voice, and singing for us. While Smapoorna team made our day with melodious Violin, Carnatic music, Xylophones and various unique musical instruments. Not to forget yummy Passion fruit juice and many more dishes by Gracy. The week began with a note “make my own music week”. Consciously, I did not plan any activities, rather focused on various kinds of resource people coming to campus. This allowed all us to choose and create our own learning and make use of opportunities with our own space.
Deepa joined us on Monday. She started with sharing about different musical instruments. Later some joined in singing Kabir songs, some went to make Guitar with empty shoe boxes and rubber bands, some continued with exploring musical instruments. In between we sang Christmas carols and folk music. Later in the day Deepa introduced chanting with Shanti Mantra.
Kabir Singing with Deepa
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Making music with different instrument was favourite of some of kids, while singing Kabir remained of some. This was growing on us. During sunshine we have been singing and dancing, but interaction with Deepa opened up a whole lot of many other musical opportunities for us.
Latcho Drom, The documentary movie is about theRomani people‘s journey from north-west India to Spain, consisting primarily of music. The film begins in the Thar Desert in Northern India and ends in Spain, passing through Egypt, Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, France, and Spain. Thank you Gracy for this movie – life can be lived with and for music.
Aayush’s grand father joined us to share his knowledge about classical music. Many of the terms were new for many of us like Taal, tarana, thaat, khayal, thumri. We listened to different ragas (By Pt. Bhimsen Joshi) – and tried relating them to the time of the day they are designed to be sung. With rain joining us – we listened to more vocal classical renditions with chai and chips.
On Thursday Sampoorna (the music therapy centre) joined us with couple of violins, small xylophones, and some other instruments. Drums etc. Among the musicians we had a violinist, a keyboard player and a Carnatic/ light music vocalist. They spent time with us to explore the instruments. And then team presenting some music- it was an eclectic mix of Indian classical, devotional and Western music. This was followed by interaction. hmmmmm the session we were mesmerized with the session.
Violin with Ritu
Reflecting back i feel that soooooooooooooo much we did in four days – the music was in air all around us.