Music, Language of Life

While the focus of Tuesday’s World Stories and Food class is, not surprisingly, stories and food, lately we’ve been exploring the universal language of music and how music is at the heart of many world cultures.

Music has played an intrinsic role in the last two stories we’ve told, both from different parts of Africa.  The first story from Nigeria, “Why the Sky is Far Away“, tells the story of how the earth came to provide food for us, and why the sky is so far out of reach.

The story goes that people used to eat the sky.  They would simply reach up and tear off delicious pieces of sky to eat.  However, during a celebration with music, feasting, laughing and dancing, one particularly insatiable character tore off more sky than she or any of the other villagers could eat.  Thus, the sky moved up and up and up past the mountains above the earth.  The earth took pity on the people and offered them food; however, they would have to till the soil and grow the food themselves, and they had to promise never to take more food than they needed.

The second story we told “Jamari’s Drum” by Eboni Bynum, Roland Jackson and Baba Wague Kiakite, tells the story of the djembe drum and its vital role in keeping peace in the village and carrying on the village’s traditions.  It is like the heartbeat of the village.

Inspired by the heartbeat and rhythm of the djembe drum, the kids made their own drums out of tin cans and parchment paper.

 

To bring the magic of music to life even more, we have two field trips coming up on Tuesday, October 28 and on Tuesday, November 4.

As we’ve been exploring stories from Africa in the past couple of weeks, we will be venturing the short distance to the African Arts Percussion store at Broadway and Alberta this Tuesday (Oct. 28) to meet the djembe drum and some of its cousins.

The following week (Nov. 4), we will be expanding our horizons to meet some other magical, inspiring and mesmerizing instruments from around the world.  We will be travelling a little bit further on November 4th, all the way to Granville Island to visit Gandharva Loka – The World Music Store.  If you haven’t been there, check out their website to get an idea of the amazing and diverse instruments they carry.  There might even be a surprise friend waiting for the kids on Granville island, but they’ll have to come along to find out…

Sign your big kid up for one of the next World Stories Tuesdays and hear all about our exciting adventures as we explore music from around the world!