TáoShān : a few ideas
August 23rd, 2010Some ideas for the intervention at Tao-Shan Elementary School, Wufeng, Xinzhu County. Read about the context of this project here.
This project is directed towards the kids of a school located in the mountains, in an Atayal aborigine village. The aim is multiple :
- Let them experience an artistic creation process
- Let them learn about listening and sound
- Let them imagine other aspects of music
- Let them think about their own culture
So far we discussed about four ideas, kind of workshops that would be spread over 4 months of pedagogic interventions.
1. Mouth Harp
Atayal have a very special musical instrument : a mouth-harp based on metal and bamboo material, used with a string and which can have several reeds. We are trying to gather informations about this instrument and to compare it to other kinds of mouth-harp like those from Japan’s Ainu, Indonesia, Vietnam and Mongolia. This is an ongoing workshop which will start by a DIY workshop in order to document the process of making an instrument. It will be followed by in-site and in-door recording session, class about the instruments and collecting interviews and documentation about it.
2. Atayal Phonetics
Atayal language belongs to austronesian family. Its structure and sound material is extremely different from the Chinese Mandarin which is spoken now by the kids. Some phonems cause problems to the kids who can’t pronunce it correctly. We’ll make a game of this phonetic issue. Inspired by Sound Poetry from Raul Hausmann or Jaap Blonk, we’ll create scores only based on Atayal phonetics. The kids might draw themselves their own graphical scores and interpret them. The differents steps of this workshop will be recorded and often we’ll listen to the recordings, using them as a new way of playing.
3. Myth & Narration
Looking back for the myths of Atayal, old stories related to the nature or the landscape. We’ll start by collecting one or a few stories and try to find some themes or topics that we can extend with the children : imagining and expanding the context of these story-items, drawing them or creating parallel narrations. This will be done in Chinese Mandarin but we’ll try to focus on a few Atayal words : names of characters or toponyms, words refering to the items.
4. Listening and Imitating Nature Sounds
Birds, insects, rain and river sounds : what are the names of all these sounds, name in Chinese and in Atayal, what are the stories associated with these sounds.
We’ll do some games of sound imitation. At first we’ll listen to sound recordings, closed eyes or even with blindfolds. We’ll try to describe the sounds. Then we’ll imitate them by whistling, by singing, by whispering. If necessary, for bird songs for examples, we can slow down the recordings for revealing its melody. Sometimes we’ll use Atayal xylophone, in a completlely different way of the rythmic patterns : to play this instrument like raindrops, or like bamboos creaking under the wind. Sometimes we’ll use some natural found objects, like dried leaves or snails shells, stones and branches. Some parts of this workshop will be held in collaboration with the choir class, designing a score for vocal imitations of nature.
