Help me give my students An Afro-Cuban drum technique book and a mini hi hat and snare to set up our Peruvian cajon drum for multicultural performances.
My classroom is performance oriented with a stage, a full set of risers, and more instruments than you would expect in the average elementary classroom. We make music with our own hands and breath, and we do it well. I'm in my sixth year at this school, and in the time I've been here, my students have become multi-instrumentalists on the bass, mandolin, piano, and drums. Some students like to switch around between the instruments, while others have "specialized" and concentrate all their learning on just one. Either way is fine by me, as long as they're learning and enjoying music and school.
My Project
Recently we had a project funded for a bass drum beater for our Cajon that is helping us breathe new life into a previously abandoned instrument. My students are now ultra interested in the weird box-shaped drum that you sit on that’s been gathering dust in the corner. Many of our students are of Mexican descent and they got very excited when they learned that the Cajon was introduced by Spanish speaking workers unloading cargo and using the shipping boxes to sit on during breaks and slapping the front to use it as a drum.
The mini hi-hat and snare will complete our Cajon drum kit allowing us to learn a variety of multi-cultural songs representing my students’ heritage and creating a culture of respecting diversity in our music classroom.
Our second and third grade PTO show is in February and we’re hoping to perform a song in Spanish that will include an authentic Afro-Cuban beat that we’ll learn from the drumming technique book. Come on over and slide us a donation so you can see a video of the concert next spring!
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