Jordan came with a bread bowl, the kind that your grandma lets dough rise in, and he made music. It was amazing, simple, and inspiring. I could see that he had the kids eating out of the palm of his hand. From that day on, I knew that I wanted to have Jordan come back to work with my students on an ArtsSmarts grant project.
Fast forward 8 months, and we are closing in on the end of our project. It has gone by in the blink of an eye. What Jordan has been working on is amazing and beautiful, and I want everyone to be able to hear what he has created with my students.
To describe the process, I probably need to go back to the beginning. In January, Jordan and two other artists came and worked with our students. Mike Mirlin taught the students a hip-hop dance piece, and Pavlo Isak taught the kids how to make graffiti style letters to create a "tag" name for themselves. Jordan worked on rhythm and percussion. Once he had the entire class making music, he performed several of his poems for us.
Our goal was simple - expose all students to all three forms of art, and eventually have them chose the form in which they wanted to become an "expert." All of our students had the opportunity to create and perform spoken word poems last year during our TreatySmarts grant project, so we knew that we could build on knowledge and skill developed last year.
After a few weeks of working with all artists, students were asked to make a choice that they would commit to for the project. Students were genuinely torn, and they didn't want to have to choose. They wanted to do it all. For many, it came down to this thinking: I did spoken word last year, but I didn't get to do hip-hop. I guess I'll try something new and do hip/hop.
Jordan ended up with a crew of 12 students that he worked with twice a week for entire afternoons. During sessions, he had the students play drama games to warm up and get comfortable. He had them create music through re-purposing junk, and he had them work on lyrics to a song. He discussed themes for the poems with students to help gel the group and their message.
Jordan created a hook and chorus with the students that flows in between student poems and binds the performance together.
He started with a rhythm on his kahoon and the line: We are all one rotating around the same sun. He called/sang this out to students and had them create a response that would work for students to call back to him. This process required students to put pencil to paper and count out beats as they came up with lines to call back. These lines also had to contain a simple message of acceptance and unity and ending racism. I tried to help by writing lyrics on the white board. When a student offered a lyric, we added it to the board, and tried it out. Jordan would drum and call out his line, or "hook" as he calls it, and students would call back their lyrics. After several afternoons, they had a beautiful and powerful message that sounded amazing.
Jordan brought artist Elizabeth Bekolay in to work with students on the musicality of the piece. She also helped finesse the lyrics.
The lyrics go something like this:
We're all one rotating around the same sun.
Teachers live in their students' wise actions.
We're all one rotating around the same sun.
Canada is a cultural nations.
We're all on rotating around the same sun.
Let's all help get rid of segregation.
We're all one rotating around the same sun.
No discrimination it's time to take action.
This piece has become a chorus that all students participate in during the spoken word/rap portion of the show.
This sounds pretty good, right? Well, it gets even better. Jordan and Elizabeth worked on a singing and rhythm component that all students helped create. We have a group of singers who do some "Ooohs," as well as a few sections of percussion. These parts were also created collaboratively with students. Elizabeth asked students to come up with what they thought would be good for background singing and percussion. To help kids to understand what they were being asked to create, both artists demonstrated through songs/raps that they had co-created. Jordan played his kahoon and Elizabeth her guitar. She sang along and he rapped. This process was repeated in my classroom as well as the grade 8 classroom. Students all had voice in how the music would be created, and in the end, Jordan and Elizabeth determined which ideas would be used.
We were fortunate to also have teacher candidate, Michelle Auser support this project. She helped us with the music and percussion while the artists weren't at our school. We were able to video record what had been created with the artists, and she picked up where they left off and helped us to organized the kids into sections that have specific instruments and rhythms.
During the past six weeks, we have given our poets time to write their own poems. Some students have chosen to rap and others prefer a spoken word style. I have been blown away by the creativity and courage of our poets. There have been times where I have questioned if they wrote the work themselves or if it was a song they had heard somewhere. It is so exciting and awesome to have kids tell you excitedly that they wrote the song themselves.
We are 3 days away from our final performance and I think we are all worried about how it will all come together. Our biggest challenge now will be properly using microphones so that the poets can be heard. The technical part of this production is way out of my realm of knowledge. Shaun Bzdel from St. Joseph High School will be helping us on Thursday afternoon and evening. PAVED Arts will also be helping us and so I hope, fingers crossed, that this can all come together on the last day.
It has been an honor to work with Jordan and Elizabeth. What they have accomplished with our students is powerful and beautiful. This is a project that could not be done without the support of the Saskatchewan Arts Board and an ArtSmarts Grant.
No comments:
Post a Comment