The longer I stay on the island, the more familiar I get with the people and their way of living. Likewise, the more people I get to know, the more ideas I have for new projects that allow me to reach out more and more. Despite limited time and resources, I decided to get my hands on unexplored areas.
About a month ago I called Her Majesty's Prison of Montserrat to arrange a meeting to propose some music workshops with the inmates. A week later, me and David got there with a good bunch of instruments – djembes, keyboard, guitars, amplifiers – and a generous list of things we could try with whoever would join us. Although we were warned about the good musical skills of some of the inmates, we didn’t know exactly what to expect.
As the participants came into the workshop space, one of them was bringing his guitars with him, as well as a collection of fifes, made with his own hands. Another inmate who came along used to play with Reggae bands so he was completely in the zone while playing the djembes. As we spent the whole morning there we had the time to create our own rhythms, write lyrics for a song and learn new music from each other. The nicest thing was that during the session everybody was giving their input and we got to learn some beautiful traditional songs. By the end of the first session I was lucky enough to be offered a handmade fife to take home! Since then we’ve been coming back there roughly every two weeks to make more music together.
In the meantime another unexpected collaboration came up. Elizabeth, a lovely american cellist who comes every year to Montserrat, got in contact with me asking about the possibility of bringing her cello to some of the sessions with the children. We ended up preparing a join session with the young division of the choir in which we did a brief performance in trio (2 violins and cello) followed by a song accompanied by the strings and some body percussion.
Right after that we were asked to go to one of the schools to do a couple of sessions so that the students could try the violin and cello. Although the sessions were quite short, all the students got to try at least one of the instruments and the whole class ended up playing a song altogether.
What I didn’t know by then was that those sessions were just a taste of what my Easter holidays would be like. Every year, the current music teacher from the primary schools organises a programme entitled “Small beginnings” which gives the opportunity to the children to have a taste of 2 of the following musical instruments: violin, cello, trombone, trumpet, saxophone, clarinet, piano and guitar.
I was responsible for the strings section, meaning I had two classes totalling 40 students – definitely a number way too big, but a challenge worth taking. In seven sessions we had the group starting from the very basics of how to hold the instrument, learning the notes and play some simple melodies and rhythms together. By the end of the programme the two classes got to perform a few songs, specially arranged for them: one group performed “Viva la Vida” by Coldplay and the other one was proudly performing “Hot hot hot”. This last one is the most famous hit made on the island by Arrow, who probably never imagined that his song would ever be performed only with strings by Montserratian children!
Here’s some pictures and a short video about our adventure with the strings.
