rockin' the steppes

I like to play guitar. Since I started playing freshman year of high school my guitar playing has largely been a personal endeavor. As a former trumpet player, I appreciated the guitar for the ability it gave me to play in a range of volumes without the use of a mute. Plus, no one plays the trumpet for his friends at a party. The guitar also gave me the chance to write my own songs, a creative outlet much more explicit and easily accessible than creating original music for the trumpet. Even after performing in front of a handful of people a handful of times in college, when I joined the Peace Corps I still considered the guitar a hobby I largely kept to myself in my room. That being said, two of the most successful moments of my service have come at summer camps while playing the guitar with Kazakhstanian kids.

At each of the two camps I worked at in the summer of 2008, I led music sessions with kids aged 12-17. With the help of colorfully lettered butcher paper we sang American folk songs (Home on the Range), kids’ songs (If You’re Happy and You Know It), “one hit wonders” (Breakfast at Tiffany’s) and new pop songs (Umbrella). We read and translated the lyrics, had interesting discussions about the meanings and moods of the songs, and then sang over and over again until after a week the students could sing them from memory. We gave concerts. We were awesome.

But singing and memorizing other peoples’ songs isn’t such a remarkable achievement as the following: at each of the two camps we also collectively wrote several songs of our own. Writing a song in a group is actually a bit easier than writing by oneself, as each student contributes for consideration a stanza or two on the chosen topic. Using this collaborative method we made camp theme songs which chronicled our love for good weather, the English language and Frisbee discs. We then taught the songs to the entire camp. At an arts and humanities camp in Burabai our music class joined forces with the poetry class to write a song about a picture of a woman playing the cello. The poetry class had studied rhyming patterns and although the students’ vocabulary is obviously limited, they produced a song with coherence and meaning. An excerpt:

A girl plays the cello / She plays in the street
All the people passing by say hello / Because she’s very sweet

She wants to eat and drink / But she must play all day
Hey, look! She’s about to sing / She’s so cool today

She sings “Hello, Hello” / “Hello, Hello.”
To these people she doesn’t know / “Please don’t go”

They surprised me with their talent and abilities, and I imagine they surprised themselves. These creative experiences are etched in my mind as moments in which the kids with whom we were working produced something original, and which gave them the opportunity to showcase their skills with and to their peers. I, for one, will be singing “Girl with Cello” for a long time to come. Middle school students in Kazakhstan have given me a new reason for loving to play the guitar.