The music education outreach wrapped on Monday, the team’s last day in Kenya, with a visit to Starehe Boys Centre, where the Berklee professors gave a workshop and clinic for students in the music class.
Tag: Admissions (Page 3 of 8)
Admissions
Another dispatch from the music business major, who was part of the Berklee team that traveled to Kenya to audition potential students and connect with music educators. Read his first post.
After the Independence Day party at the U.S. Ambassador to Kenya’s residence, we headed back to the Brookhouse School where professors Ron Reid and Dan Moretti gave clinics for Brookhouse students, musicians who had auditioned earlier in the week, and local musicians.
Here, Reid works with an ensemble – and gets the entire class to participate – on the first part of a song he just taught them. The song, “Ogu Aye,” is a traditional Yoruba chant.
In Moretti’s workshop, “Understanding and Communicating Styles for all Musicians,” he demonstrated some basic scat techniques he developed that are used to sing drum and bass grooves. The techniques help players better communicate their groove ideas in rehearsal and performance situations.
Student Joey Guglielmo, a music business major and guitarist, accompanied Berklee’s admissions team to Kenya this month. But he wasn’t just along for the ride—he’s a representative of his family’s foundation March to the Top, which supports education, conservation, and health care in Africa. He shares his impressions:
Day 1: Brookhouse School
Today we spoke about the different teaching methods and introductions to certain courses which are offered at Berklee and we asked what the faculty from the other schools were looking to get from the meeting. They spoke about the shortage of technology and how it limits their students.
Berklee faculty member Ron Reid
Actually, these are the first of many videos from the events last week. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 82 musicians from several different African countries auditioned at the Brookhouse School in Nairobi, Kenya, for scholarship opportunities to attend Berklee through the Africa Scholars Program. Many others had to be turned away because there just wasn’t enough time.
One day I was doing work in a second floor office in the school. From my tower (literally, see earlier post), I heard a song break out in the distance, so I went down to check it out. The singers told me they had just met at the auditions. Many of them heard about the events in the newspaper, from friends, or on Facebook, which is very popular here. Most people access it – and the web in general – on their phones since they don’t always have access to computers.
Here they perform the song “Malaika,” in the zilizopendwa genre, by Kenyan artist Fadhili Williams. Several of the candidates sang it in their auditions.