This project builds on the success of our 2009 project in Cameroon. As in that project, we will partner with the Cameroon Nigeria Youth Movement (CNYM), led by Ebere Valentine. The key difference is that this will be our first virtual project.
Flutist Allie Deaver-Petchenik will represent CiH in the United States. CNYM will choose from among Cameroonian and Nigerian musicians who worked with CiH during our 2009 project in Cameroon. CNYM should ensure that both Cameroonian and Nigerian musicians are represented.
Next, both groups of teaching artists approach primary schools or summer learning camps in their communities. These primary schools must agree to let the teaching artists work with a group of 20 to 30 students for a total of between 14 and 20 hours of instruction. CNYM should ensure that both Cameroonian and Nigerian students are represented. Allie has chosen students at a summer camp in Chicago.
For the "Sound Pictures" curriculum, teaching artists visit the school for 1-2 hours each day to help the students prepare pictures that the musicians can then interpret as musical scores. The teaching artists begin with a demonstration of their instruments and through clapping activities designed to get the students used to the idea of creating music. From the first day, the students should be aware that the goal of the project is the creation of short compositions for any three instruments, followed by their simultaneous performance in Cameroon and the US.
First, the teaching artist helps the students form small groups called "pods." Each pod will be responsible for the creation of one composition. There should be about six pods, each of which creates a composition about 3 to 5 minutes in length.
From the beginning, the teaching artists encourage the children to make connections between sound and sight. For instance, a short dot on a piece of paper might represent a short note, while a short line might represent a longer note. A high dot might represent a high note, and a low dot might represent a low note. The students should work with the teaching artist to develop a clear and consistent form of musical notation.
Then, the students and teaching artist work together to explore the effect of different instruments playing at the same time. They explore the students' ability to manipulate the relative dynamics of musicians in real time by asking two students to raise and lower their hands, thereby controlling the volume of two musicians performing in front of them. The students then explore how their "score" can indicate separate parts for three different musicians, perhaps by turning a sheet of paper sideways and drawing two lines across it to divide it into three lengthwise sections. The dots, lines, and shapes for the three musicians can then be filled into the three sections.
In both countries, the organizations help the children record a video message, which is then sent electronically to the organization in the other country. Allie and the Chicago students have recorded this video message.
Someone from CiH will scan the students' scores as PDFs and e-mail them to CNYM. Someone from CNYM will scan those students' scores and e-mail them to CiH. CiH musicians begin rehearsing the scores from Cameroon, while CNYM musicians begin rehearsing the scores from the US. A piece that might be played in the US on viola, flute, and trombone might be played on saxophone, mvet, and drums in Cameroon.
The program order for any performance is the same in both countries. The musicians perform their own pieces for a half hour, followed by a broadcast of the video message for the audience. The Cameroonian audience sees the American video message, and vice versa. After that, both groups of musicians perform both groups of pieces.
A pod of Cameroonian students would listen to the CNYM teaching artists perform their piece at the same time that CiH musicians are performing the exact same piece but on different instruments. Digital recordings of both performances are made by both organizations. Both organizations also take videos of the performances, taking care that each composition is on the video.
The day after the performance, the audio recordings are exchanged through the internet. The videos of each composition are uploaded to YouTube or sent electronically. Students in both countries meet once with the teaching artist after the performance and after the recordings are exchanged. They either listen to the audio recordings, watch the video recordings, or both.
The teaching artist leads the students in a discussion involving the differences between different interpretations of the same pieces, their reaction to the compositions of students' from another country that they heard performed live locally by their own musicians, and how the project affected their views of other countries and ethnic groups. The organizations then share the results of the discussion with each other.
The title of this project comes from a comment by Ebere Valentine that future collaborations following the 2009 project by CiH and CNYM would create "A Peaceful Atmosphere" among Americans, Cameroonians, and Nigerians.
Through creating compositions, writing them down, hearing them performed alongside compositions by children from another country, and then hearing the recording of their own pieces performed by musicians from another country, the children will do their part to create that peaceful atmosphere, and the adults who work with them will similarly find that beautiful peace which the universal language of music can so eloquently describe.
Artist Services Coordinator Eric Hanser poses with a child he has just taught how to write music at the karate dojo in the Essos neighborhood of Yaoundé, Cameroon, in May 2009.
