The Living Song team had a wonderful week at UCPS in June.
Two young artists were resident working with reception, year 1, year 5 and year 6 learners. Harine (18) and Richie (21) gained experience working alongside teachers based at the school, focusing on singing while drawing on other art forms to engage, inspire and explore with the children. The theme of our work was ‘Hajanga’.
The meaning of the word ‘Hajanga’ as described by Jacob Collier, the composer of the song, describes the force of your life. He says, “… everything goes in cycles, everything goes up and down and round and round. It’s people coming together, united by this celebratory force and a real sense of self-acceptance. The sense that everybody has this unified song that they sing, this idea of drawing from the whole of the universe around you and then learning how to love the people around, and the things around you and learning how to love yourself in that. You learn to celebrate yourself in the context of a universal community of energetic things”.
Harine worked with two classes. She said, “I led and learnt some warm-up songs, some of which included Makaton sign language. The EYFS children also used rain makers. I liked how interactive we made our lessons and how involved the children were. I loved the exploration of how we can use different motions to create different sounds to associate with varying levels of rain (raindrops, showers and storms”.
With year 5 and 6 we collaborated with drama, spending the week creating tableau’s, writing raps, songs and developing performances in a kind of mini-opera. There were solos and duets and chorus sections, all exploring the theme of the song Hajanga. Our young Artist Richie led singing activities, played keyboards and helped facilitate the song making with the learners.
