Sam and Duncan in Mumbai Weeks 2-3

After a few trips on the world’s busiest train where we had to leap onto the dubious vehicle as it pulled out of the station and then hang out of the doorless carriage, a magnificent beer tower (no exaggeration there), and an attempt to cook masala where the victims of this dish will be suffering from the amount of spice used in the recipe for weeks, we are back with another blog entry.

We are in full swing at the three schools with interesting lesson plans (the children told us our lessons are interesting so it’s not just me being big headed) and on a broader scale, a working curriculum, which we hope will provide a pivotal mechanism for the music education at Garodia. Within these lessons we have encouraged more intelligent listening where the pupils can link music to emotions/ideas through aspects of musical events, and have purported the effective technique of Kodaly which in turn has led to children developing rhythms with notes and then eventually Western notation.

Sam teaching students rhythmic notation

We have also jumped deep into piano and violin lessons where we are able to provide the students with a wholesome idea of technique and more importantly lots of sight-reading, which was a major aspect to the Paul Harris workshop which we both attended and received a few intriguing ideas. We also met Josh and had a beer but that is another story.

Violin lesson!

 

Because this is a cultural exchange we braved another few trains and watched the ‘Megh Malhar’ festival which consisted of three nights of Indian Classical Music to welcome in the monsoon. The monsoon was already in full swing but never mind! There were some phenomenal performances from extraordinary singers and sitarists accompanied by fantastic tabla players.

On an extra-curricular note, we are still helping put together the musical for the International school by auditioning the children in each year and filtering out an effective choir. On top of this we are working with the P.G School to put together the popular piece ‘Jai-ho’ for India’s Independence Day in August.

 

We have also been sight seeing around Mumbai! We have visited Colaba and been to the impressive Gateway to India, as well as the famous Leopold cafe for some great food. Marine Drive is beautiful, especially at night, and even on cloudy days the sunset is lovely.

Marine Drive

On a more serious note the two girls we were living with have left the apartment and we have realised that there is another floor which has two balconies! With this, the supposedly unusual amount of rain for monsoon period, and the realisation that our train station is surrounded by goats and pigs, that is all from us this time.

Sam after a hard day's work...