The Blues Festival promotes the opportunity for our schoolchildren to experience ‘real’ blues music (unplugged from their iPods!).
With this in mind, some of our visiting performers tour the schools with ‘workshop’ sessions.
Here’s what the Hokum Hotshots had to say about their visit in 2008…
The Hokum Hotshots go back to school
The organisers of the Shetland Blues Festival, and in particular James Carlyle, approached us to present some of our music to the schools throughout Shetland. We decided that we would concentrate on the great range of instruments we play, demonstrating the different sounds, volumes and rhythms that can be made. We introduced guitar, slide guitar, Hawaiian guitar, mandolin, tiple, ukulele, washboard, kazoo, train whistles and rubber chicken and demonstrated the playing of music ranging from slow blues, through hokum (happy blues!) and country music finally lifting the roof with “Mama don’t Allow no Noisy Children in here”!
We gave the children the opportunity to make their own musical instruments, which they set about with gusto and were overall very successful, the end-result being some of the noisiest kazoos on the islands.
Next time they’re going to make pianos!
The fears we had that the music might be beyond the children were unfounded. They followed us on our journey through the blues and responded enthusiastically when asked (and sometimes when not!). The natural curiosity of all the children was refreshing; the desire to join in, especially from the additional support pupils, was inspiring.
We would like to thank Noelle Henderson, the Creative Links Officer, and all the staff at the schools who helped to control the chaos, but most of all the children, who made us welcome and showed their appreciation in the most natural way: enthusiasm.
The Hokum Hotshots, August 2008
