WE MAKE NOISE
A week-long spring break camp | Ages 8 - 14 | Monday, April 2 - Friday, April 6 2018
In this week-long immersive day camp, 25 youth dove into a week of creative instrument-making and collaborative music production. Throughout the week we worked with guest teaching artists, musicians, instrument-makers and recording artists. One group worked with Darnell Harris and Sharece Johnson to write lyrics, record beats, and produce songs. We learned about the rhythm, harmony, and melody using our own bodies; and warmed up to songwriting by writing chants and re-writing the words to our favorite nursery rhymes and pop songs. By the end of the week, we had produced an album of original songs. Another group worked with guest artists Bill Brovold and David Eustace to design and build instruments out of recycled and unexpected objects: we made tea-can birimbaus, cardboard shakers and rainsticks, bottle cap castanets, sonotube drums, conduit pipe flutes, a large cimbalom and a PVC pipe marimba. Then, under the guidance of composer and musical director Tony Kieraldo, we turned our original instruments into shared rhythm and songs, and practiced our skills at both playing music and conducting. Together we all experimented with rhythm through double dutch, jump roping and hand clapping games, and expanded our repertoire with the Badila Drum Ensemble. We created our own band names and styles for an epic Battle of the Bands, and played games throughout the week that had everyone dancing, singing, and laughing. At the end of the week, we performed our songs and played our orchestra of original instruments for our family and friends, and invited everyone to join us in a musical jam.
A special thank you to our teaching artists (Darnell Harris, Bill Brovold, David Eustace and Tony Kieraldo), visiting experts and artists (Arone Dyer, Aron Sanchez, and Ngonda Badila), our amazing crew of volunteers (Melissa, Rebecca, Dave and Joy), and to the extraordinary crew of teen volunteers who spent their spring break mentoring and supporting their younger peers (Jasmin, Cymon, Aidan, Gavin, Adonis, Pierre, and Min). Thank you also to the Greene County Council on the Arts: this program was made possible in part with public funds from the Decentralization Program of the NYS Council on the Arts, administered in Columbia County by the Greene County Council on the Arts through the Community Arts Grants program.
Stay tuned - songs will be uploaded soon!
