Today's great musical moment

Earlier this evening, while sitting outside enjoying a glass of good wine, I wrote about the events of this afternoon:

It is Friday afternoon. I am working with my group of advanced violin students – seven girls ages thirteen to sixteen – on a double concerto by Vivaldi. The girls, all proficient players, have learned their parts and are developing good ensemble skills, but sometimes they are still too caught up in the effort to play all the right notes to feel the music’s heartbeat – the internal pulse into which all the parts fit.

Suddenly we hear music from across the hall: guitars, drums and piano playing the instrumental parts for Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al.” The girls tap their feet and move to the music. I run across the hall to ask David, Umoja’s guitar teacher who is leading the ensemble class, what key they are playing in. Finding out that it’s F major, I return to my class and quickly teach the girls the notes for the wonderful  brass part that opens Simon’s great classic. We then traipse across the hall and into the large classroom.

“Karibu!” says David. “Welcome! One, two, three, four, five – “ and off we go! Violins begin, guitars and drums and piano join in… it is energetic, exhilarating music! Three younger violinists spill out of a nearby classroom;  I show them what to play and they join in. Parents and teachers are clapping their hands and dancing. There is a smile on every face.  The song ends amid enthusiastic applause. “Let’s do this again!” exclaims one of the young violinists. For sure – we will!

Ndoto

Here is an article I have just finished writing about Umoja's exciting collaborative project. Hopefully this article, along with pictures, will be published in several Arusha newspapers and magazines.

Ndoto: a dream becomes reality

“ BA da BA da BA da (shhh!) HEY! BA da BA da BA da (shhh!)…”

“All right, now we are no longer children, we are tiny ants! And we must escape from the elephant. Ready? Jump, roll, run away. Very good!”

Rehearsals are underway for Ndoto! This exciting collaboration between Umoja Music School, Community Arts Trust, and French artist Colette Albiolo will include music composed by Umoja music teacher Danielle Williams, choreography created by Umoja director Tiana Razafy, dancing, singing, drumming, multiple instruments, and visual art.

Offering music lessons to students of all ages in Arusha, Umoja Music School’s mission is to play a key role in creating an artistically aware and appreciative community of people from all sectors of society regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or socio-economic background. Community Arts Trust, Umoja’s partner organization, coordinates several programs including the Umoja Ensemble, a traditional music ensemble based at two Arusha primary schools.

Ndoto is the Swahili word for dream. Through music and movement, Ndoto tells the magical tale of children who dream that they are transformed into ants. As ants they gather food, run from elephants, dig into the earth to escape a storm, and fly through the air. Umoja Ensemble and Umoja Music School children will dance, sing and play instruments against a backdrop of huge projected images of  visual art: Colette Albiolo’s diachromie. (DIachromie: light (dia) and colour (chromos) ).

Albiolo describes her work in this way:  “Diachromie is a name that I have chosen to depict art pieces that were conceived for video screening on any type of giant  screen , be it walls or objects. The works originate from paint and engraving on glass panels.  Later on they are digitalized, which enables me to modify shapes and colours. At the moment my “Diachrotheque” consists of more than three thousand pieces. I started working on the diachomies in early 2000.”

The project was conceived last October during a skype conversation between Williams and Albiolo, who had been Williams’s art history teacher in France. “Colette described her passion and interest in collaborating with composers and mentioned that she would someday be interested in creating an artistic project with me. As soon as I mentioned doing a project in Tanzania, she jumped at the idea and began brainstorming!” Williams then shared the idea with Razafy, who immediately saw its creative potential, and Ndoto was born.

Williams soon started composing the music. “For a composer, it’s exciting to look at all the colours we can make with sound, using everything from pots and pans to water to drums and more common instruments. It’s tempting to create music that has too much going on. I have to keep the music simple enough for all of our students to remember, including the youngest ones, but interesting enough to captivate the audience and excite the performers.”

Rehearsals began in January. Each week as Williams finishes composing a new section of the music, she and Razafy meet to talk about that segment of the performance, and then Razafy creates the choreography. “The whole piece is choreography in terms of thinking about the performers’ coming on and going off stage, and how to direct the attention of the audience on the movement, the music, or the images,” Razafy says. “I have to think about the abilities of the children, the dynamic of the sequence and the kind of atmosphere needed on stage.”

Williams and Razafy, along with Umoja music teachers David Seng’enge and Alison Feuerwerker, work with the three Umoja Ensemble groups to teach them their parts: “To teach the choreography,” says Razafy, “ I start with giving a meaning to the move – that is the story part – then I give a quality and timing to them move, then we train with the music while making sure we keep the intention given in the story.”  Every week the children learn something new but must also review previously learned material. Since the learning process involves movement, games, and creating rhythms on a variety of instruments, the children are having a great time learning, and the more they learn the better they are able to remember. Meanwhile Seng’enge, Feuerwerker and Williams have begun teaching the music to a a group of Umoja Music School instrumental students who will accompany the dancing and drumming on piano, guitars, violins, and flutes. 

Rehearsing and performing a large-scale show like Ndoto is a new experience for the children. “So far they have been performing a song or a drum piece. This time they are asked to sing, play music and act at the same time,” says Razafy  “ I am amazed at how much the children are engaged in this project. They have come a long way in their understand of what a performance is and what they need to do in a performance.” Williams adds, “The children who are performing are so filled with energy and so much fun to work with!”

One big excitement for the young performers is that they will have the opportunity to interact with the artist face to face, Colette Albiolo plans to travel to Arusha for the week leading up to the performance.

Through the work of Umoja Music School and Community Arts Trust, young Tanzanian children are experiencing the excitement of participating in a large-scale collaborative project with multiple art forms and an international artist. And the Arusha community will benefit as well: Ndoto is scheduled for a public performance on June 16, 2012, time and location to be announced. The audience will also have the opportunity to meet Colette Albiolo and to hear about her work, as well as to talk with the Umoja faculty about the Ndoto project.

What does the future hold? “At the beginning of Umoja we brainstormed about where we would like to be in five years’ time,” says Razafy. “I envisioned having an Umoja performers company. It looks like Ndoto will be the first milestone toward that dream.”

For more information about Ndoto, contact Umoja Music School at umomj.arts@gmail.com.

For more information about Colette Albiolo and her work, visit her website at Albiolo.eu.

Maji ni Maisha (water is life)

This morning when I packed my backpack to get ready to take the dalla-dalla to work I had trouble fitting everything in. Two empty 1.5 litre water bottles took up most of the space. As municipal tap water in Arusha is not safe for drinking (we boil and filter it), Danielle and I often fill our water bottles at ISM where there is a supply of treated drinking water. I started to grumble to myself about the inconvenience of carrying water bottles around, but then I stopped to think.

Last week I read an excellent short novel titled The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Canadian author Steven Galloway. Based on true events that took place during the siege of Sarajevo in the mid 1990’s, it is the story of a cellist who witnessed a bombing from his apartment window, then decided to play his cello at the spot where the bomb fell for 22 days – one day for each of the people killed by the bomb. The Cellist of Sarajevo also tells the story of the day-to-day lives of several people living in Sarajevo during the siege. One is the father of a young family who risks his life every few days to fetch his family’s water supply, because like any person who ventures out into the street he may be shot at any instant by a sniper.  I have never had to risk my life to fetch water.

I thought about a friend who lives in another part of Arusha who had no running water at his house for five days. And another friend here who rarely has running water on weekends. Occasionally the taps at our house are dry – but only for an hour or two. We are so fortunate.

I thought of last Friday’s drive out to Maasai Joy, one of the schools where we teach Umoja Ensemble. As Danielle, Tiana and I looked out over the parched landscape (and tried not to inhale the dust filling Tiana’s car,) Tiana worried aloud about the dryness – worse this year than ever before – and whether this could be the start of a new desert in northern Tanzania. And when the rains come, will the soil just wash away because the land is so dry that the water will not be able to seep in?

I thought of the women and girls in the Rwandan village where I was in July 2010, carrying water in jugs on their heads for many kilometres several times a day, and of the celebration that must have taken place when well-builders dug deep enough to strike water under the earth.  I thought of how when it rains in Arusha everything is suddenly green, flowers burst into bloom, and people rejoice.

On the way to work I looked out of the dalla-dalla window as we passed a huge tank truck painted florescent blue with the words “maji safi” (clean water) in bold white letters on the side, like a declaration. It made me smile. And as I filled my water bottles at the tap at ISM, I gave thanks for the availability of clean water.

Maji ni maisha!

Birthday celebration!

Danielle's birthday is February 5th and mine is February 6th. We celebrated with good friends and awesome Indian food at Big Bite restaurant.