Roots and Routes

This fantastic project occupied us every Wednesday afternoon for several months, and finished with two concerts - one at York University as part of their Gamelan festival and the other at Hull Festival. We worked with Emily Crossland and her lovely team of volunteers (Angel, Joe, Caterina and Stefan) - to bring together the two very different musics of Gamelan and Rap.

Over the weeks, three main groups of children experienced the delights of Gamelan: our Junior club, the Hempland Kids Club, and our group of young people who are home-educated. In the end there was a team of 14, who did a brilliant job performing their work.

There were two pieces. One, featured in the video, used a conventional rap structure, and features Eammon, a young rapper from our electronics club (!) and Jonny, who attends our inclusive provision, and who we think is quite possibly the best rapper in the world who has down's syndrome! The second piece was a more traditional Gamelan piece, and had sections composed by the young people.

With huge thanks to Neil who was the driving force in making the two genres synthesize and who provided us with a rap beat and structure. It was quite a challenge finding a way round the total disparity of the cultures and musics!