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Making Music Around the World

By Chai Reddy posted 03-30-2016 10:22 PM

  

Like many of you, I was traveling with students during Spring Break. I had the opportunity to join our school Symphony Orchestra on a good will mission to southern China. After arriving in Hong Kong, the group spent its time in Zhongshan, Foshan, and Guangzhou. In addition to their performances, we arranged for the students to meet and interact with a few schools and community groups. I always hesitate with the short term visits because I wonder about the authenticity and connections that can actually be established with just having students visit with one another for a couple of hours. How open are students willing to be if they are forced into an environment that will not last past lunch time?

My questions were immediately answered at each location as the students, despite any language or cultural differences, were immediately drawn to one another. They connected around music, movies, and kung fu. One of the schools we visited was the Huang Fei Hong International Civil and Military School. The students, ages 5-17, attend regular classes but also put in lots of training around the art of kung fu. Seeing them fly through the air and demonstrate pure power as they broke wooden and metal sticks and contorted their bodies left us all amazed. But despite having a language obstacle, both sets of students wanted to share with one another and take lots of pictures...I mean lots of pictures. We stayed for over an hour after the kung fu performance just so all of their students and our students could finish taking all of the posed and action shots that they wanted. Some of our students who know Chinese and their students who knew a little bit of English shared some stories, but it was the power of action and demonstration that won everyone over.

The Symphony Orchestra had a couple of opportunities to share the stage or perform before our various Chinese hosts and while the pieces from each group offered a high level performance, it was seeing the groups talk beyond the music that was the best piece of artwork. The differences between all of them are numerous, but finding one or two commonalities made all the difference in breaking down the walls. While I would still push for a longer stay and interaction period around something collaborative, I've grown to appreciate that any interactions are good interactions. If students are more comfortable communicating with people from different cultures that might be significantly different, then why wouldn't they be able to do this with people from their own community who are unfamiliar? Or those from other new countries? Given that our school is on an island, we are geographically isolated from everyone else. However the friendships that can be created, if we are willing to make those environments, are better than any concert we could possibly attend.

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