PERCUSSION INCLUSION 1..2..3..go!

Daniel is a passionate musican from Argentina. He decided to change his life, stoped working as an engineer in Argentina and came to Starkmacher (Germany) to develop social projects. He is a real changemaker that you need to get to know!


During the third meeting of the project Inclusion is Fusion, he offered a percussion workshop. It's an approach that you can use in your own youth work, especially with intercultural groups when people are having different language skills.
 

Here is, what he wants to share with us:

*Why did I do these percussion workshops?

It was really fun for me when I saw some percussion ensembles, and also taking part in some of them made me notice that I wanted to share music with other people. I've studied music, and during my studies I faced really different kind of teachers and ways of teaching.

 I'm a theoretical guy, and need every explanation to understand something, but when I started teaching, I realized that there are many ways of incorporating knowledge. Explaining, not explaining, giving opportunities to create, putting emphasis on the correct exercises, working alone, together, and much more....

*How did we try to do them?

Playing in group has advantages and disadvantages, as many other activities. One of these is the difficulty in playing together, because everyone carries its own fears, personality, etcetera to deal with the personal challenge that is learning the rhythm patterns, as to add on the combination of his/her own sounds and mistakes to the others sounds and mistakes. That's why trusting the group is really important.

At the beginning of every workshop, it is basic to establish and feed team feeling. Where everyone knows that his/her presence is fundamental for the group, and that mistakes are not important, if you make a mistake, just keep the ball rolling and carry on playing, the group is there for you. If one fails, the group fails. It's no more an I, you, he, she but a 'we'. A we that play percussion, a we that reach things that I can't reach, a we that have fun while playing, a we that work hard for having good results.

*Which outcomes did we get?

So when it comes to results, what are we talking about? Firstly, there are the artistic results: a short show which includes what we’ve learnt together, elements suggested by the workshop attendants and some impros.

But there are also other results that can be useful also in topics not related to music: Some participants said that taking part in the workshop was for them going out of the comfort zone and in spite of what they expected they felt  safe. Others learnt to work in group, others gained self-confidence while playing on stage, others had fun while making coordination activities although they thought it was only stressful. So with all these outcomes I'd like to encourage you to take part in the next percussion Workshop you can. Music does things on us that we don't even realize.

*How is related to inclusion?
In our workshops we try to show how everyone is important for the others, and which role he/she can play. For some people playing is easy, but for others not that much. When we split into groups we're mixed, and everyone has something to give maybe  a question, maybe an answer. 
Together we achieve goals that individually we couldn't, or would have taken us much more time than what we had.

Finally, while performing, the adrenaline  and enthusiasm of being part of it is shared by all, because we all belong to that WE!

Dani teaching the project group in October 2017.

Ivan having fun reusing the old bucket for percussion!

Argentian boy playing percussion in a past workshop with Dani. 

Author: Daniel Macri, English Revision: Cristian Romero