Little Music Masters meeting The Crane Experts!

Dharavi Rocks! is a joint educational project between Blue Frog and Acron Foundation, an NGO working for the upliftment of slum children and ragpickers in Mumbai. The project was started with the idea to give access to music to the less privileged combining arts with education.

I invited the children of Dharavi Rocks not only for them to share their music with the 1000 crane children, but also to learn about The 1000 Crane Project themselves.

The first half of the day, we had our 1000 Crane children, learn a little bit of paper craft and clay-modeling with Victor, a fellow from TISS.

During this time, I welcomed the Dharavi Rocks team of twelve – Afzal, Faisal, Minaz, Abdulla, Hasan, Billal, Aziz, Afridi, Rahim, Athar, Imtiaz and Asif!

I presented the story of Sadako Sasaki and The 1000 Cranes and the Hazards of Nuclear Power. To my surprise, there were some of them who knew about it already, which was impressive.

They then all painted their own crane T-shirt to be sent to Fukushima.

I then brought them to the Khula Asaman shed where the 1000 crane children were completing their clay models. Played a few introduction games and went for lunch.

Post Lunch, if when the fun began.

The Dharavi Rocks group came out with their home instruments and played a really fantastic piece for our group. The 1000 Crane children we just left amazed.

We then made a pact – The Dharavi Rocks kids would teach The 1000 Crane children music, and in turn they would learn origami from them. This was unanimously agreed upon.

The group was split as per the no of instruments brought, and each child learn how to play a short rhythm. They then performed individually, introducing the instrument as well as their teacher.

Then, we asked the Dharavi Rocks group, to make a band out of the 1000 crane group, which they handled very professionally and actually got the 10 kids to play a collective rhythm.

We then tried to use their instruments to add music to the Tara Anthem as well as another song.  This was a challenge, as both groups were new to each other, but, the co-operation and co-ordination was tremendous. Finally, we did manage to perform two songs collectively, pretty well.

It was then the turn of the 1000 crane children to teach the Dharavi Rocks group origami. Having gone thru a coaching session already, the kids found it easier to teach their new students. They finally made crane mobiles, and presented it to each child, as a memento of the day spent with them.

There was learning for me as well ! The kids from Dharavi Rocks taught me that there is a musician in all of us, as without any hesitation, I took over and taught them the anthem and the African song –SIM GEM GEM, taught to me by my dear friends Ludovica and Paolo from Italy.

A rather musical day and a fulfilling day ! Thank You Anil, Vinod, Acron Foundation and Dharavi Rocks !