Africa Big 5 Project - The Ideas
This project was designed to explore the 'big 5 animals of Africa'. The disgusting, cruel, abhorrent practice of hunting these creatures for sport is where the big five title originated in the 19th century: the big five being, 'the most difficult animals to hunt on foot'.
This musical project's goal is to celebrate these magnificent animals and raise awareness of the precarious situation they are in regard to their survival.
Our big five are: Buffalo Elephant Leopard Lion Rhino
The most difficult thing about writing a series of songs for a project is the starting point, the first idea (often only a fragment). My challenge was to find a thread through the majority of the songs which gave each 'animal' its own unique soundscape. The link was the heavy use of percussion in all the songs (even the slow ballad style of 'Elephant').
The lyrics of the songs are paramount, and Judith is brilliant at painting pictures with words. The only difficulty that arises is music first or lyrics first or a mixture. I suppose it's a race for who gets there first. The best idea we have is to 'kick around' musical ideas and then 'see what happens'. It has worked so far!
Let's look at some details.
The opening song in the collection is Buffalo. The opening of the song is percussion-based: bongoes, claves, guiro, cabasa, and kit. I have used Latin percussion instruments in the mix along with a fusion of African djembe-based rhythms and Latin rhythms. You will see and hear the clave rhythm at the heart of the song - this is totally intentional. African influence on Latin rhythms is profound and muti-faceted: polyrhythms, call and response, clave rhythms, syncopation.
I would like to develop this idea in all my songs: creating rhythm sections that teachers and children can access by clapping or using percussion instruments.
In the projects we create, we try to add a percussion pack element where teachers can develop percussion grooves by using 2, 3, 4 or more rhythms layered on top of each other. The song's percussion base is built up in exactly the same way.
As another example, the guitars mirror the rhythm base of the whole song.
In my next post, I'll talk about the other four songs and how we roll out the ideas for teachers and children to access.
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