Riding Cow – Dancehall Prepared Piano

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“If you can’ find horse, ride cow,” is a saying we have in Barbados. It means that if your ideal tool is not present; you have to improvise.

Teaching in a public education system in a 3rd world country means that riding cow happens regularly. Sometimes cow jockeying produces unexpected results such as in the videos below.

The videos you will see were made on the piano in the performing hall at the only tertiary level music institution in Barbados. The piano is busted and terribly out of tune.  However, because the strings in the lower register are gone, they produce a percussive sound that is very close to a prepared piano. The prepared piano sound comes from adding objects onto the strings to get different textures. For those of you unfamiliar with how that works watch and listen below:

In my videos, I played a variety of dancehall numbers as that music inspires me.

Enough program notes though, here are the videos. First up is Clarks by Vybz Kartel and the other is a Dancehall improvisation piece. Enjoy!

In the Classroom with New Soca Writers

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At the Barbados Community College I teach Caribbean music. In class, in keeping with my creative-centric approach, which like the Americans I have give a name, creativincism, I try to get the students to write in the styles taught. Given the fact that Soca has become confined to such a limited  range of compositional choices, I provide my students with the necessary ones and see what they come up with. Of course this stuff is graded, how else would they participate?  First up are two groups composing in the style of Destra circa early 2000s. I call this Power Soca (which of course puts me in contradiction with others but I grade the papers right?).

Here is another one. By the way, Lennox seen here is not a Soca/Calypso practitioner by any stretch of the imagination.

 

In my view, even though the audio and video are quite rough, they manage to at least provide you with a good understanding of the style the students are working with. The same could also be said of the next two videos which are written in the Bashment Soca style.

 

I have chosen the last two guys, Kevin and David, because they are as far removed from this music in terms of what they do regularly as any two musicians could be. However, given the guidelines and the space, they too managed to create something that is cool.

To end, I think that creativity lies in many humans. It just shows that once given the boundaries within style and a bit of space, what can be accomplished. It also shows that Soca can have new writers, just that the closed nature of the Caribbean media limit this.
Anyway, let me end with Lennox, “your Rum is my Rum, and my Rum…”

Those who can’t, teach. Or should that be those who can, can’t teach?

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The old anecdote, those who can’t, teach, has been bandied around in music for quite a bit. 

The question I have however is, “can’t do what?”

Teaching music requires a depth of knowledge.  Another crucial skill of any music teacher, especially those in emerging areas such as Caribbean music, is the ability to TRANSLATE musical language into spoken language.

This part is quite difficult.

To demonstrate this difficulty check this clip from Sly and Robbie as they attempt to explain what they do. 

What Sly and Robbie lack here is not intelligence but instead the ability to translate the language of sound into the language of language. So while they are brilliant musicians and obviously highly intelligent, the ability to put what they do into ways people can understand is not something that comes easy. *

So remember all and sundry that because a guy is a genius musician it does not make him a genius teacher. Also music teachers remember your task is a difficult one and never feel inferior because you never graced the big stage. We are all needed to keep #musicaLive.

*What could of happened instead is these guys communicating through playing and others trying to copy them; similar to how oral cultures pass on their knowledge orally/aurally.