Alchemy, marching ahead through its 15th year, reinvents and explores new possibilities to revolutionize learning. Its focuses on making learning enjoyable one and always make a significant difference. Alchemy always understands the importance of classroom culture and its impact on student success. Implementing these feel good ideas to reality alchemy has come up with a new initiative with the launch of ‘BEYOND THE CLASSROOM’ sessions.
Beyond the Classroom is an initiative to revolutionize learning by creating more opportunities for experiential learning, Lecture demonstrations & Leadership talks by industry experts, Insight & involvement into socially useful & productive initiatives by various organised NGO’s / groups.
The first planned activity of Beyond The Classroom was Exploring Music from within & beyond us. This activity was held on 29th October, 2017 at Black Box Studio and was a great success. The session was handled by Mr. Murali, Founder, Jusdrums, school for Drums with nearly 900 students in Chennai.
The session was scheduled to be done in two batches for junior students and senior students from 10.00 a.m to 11.30 a.m and 12.00p.m to 1.30 p.m respectively. The sessions were planned to go with same content of lecture for both the batches, but with few advanced level interaction with senior students.
It was a great start on Sunday morning to look at the place gathered with beautiful kids and their encouraging parents who came to attend the music session as a part of their learning activity. Mr. Vijay Viswanathan, Founder & Managing Director of Alchemy Academy of Performing Arts addressed the gathering with a welcome speech and also gave a brief introduction about Mr. Murali to the audience.
The session gets started! focus lights are turned on, a deep silence was maintained in the hall. Mr. Murali said audience to close their eyes and identify the sounds he plays. To make those sounds, He takes a bag out and says to all that it is a magic bag. He played, music of birds chirping, trees dancing, winds blowing, water flowing, crickets twirling and frogs cloaking. Of course, I can hear your question, where is the magic here? I swear! you will not believe me if I say that, the sounds were played through non musical instruments. Literally everyone was excited seeing his extraordinary ideas of creating musical instruments with bottle caps, tree seeds called Tirakita, Guiros, Bells, frog rasp that are considered as a dump. He shared audience with his experience about music and possibilities of creating music from anything surrounded by.
Followed by a lecture on the origin of drums and evolution of its name was very much useful to the children. He played varieties of music like traditional folk music of Kerala called Chanda Melam and a dessert ride on camel with bubble top water cans and Cohen respectively. Despite the age, audience thoroughly enjoyed the pleasure of hearing music and got inspired with his creation of music. He repeatedly proves his talent, his ideas on possibilities of creativity through music and how we can relate ourselves to the world of music is very much appreciable.
Lecture about different types of drums and its various sounds was an added content to the senior students in the second batch. He initiated a play of musical instruments with parents, students and all other audiences. All together actively participated and enjoyed the interaction session. He gave a few musical instruments like Tambourine, Snare Drums to students and made them hear his beat to play along. It was really a visual treat, he transformed the entire space into a lively atmosphere surrounded by music.
A new musical instrument, Hang Drum was introduced to the students. Its visual appearance made students guess it as an UFO, Barbeque. Despite the look, the music played out of it was really a magic for ears. Audience were mesmerized listening to the music. It was really a breathtaking play for the day.
‘Music itself is a language that can be communicated by anyone’ was said by Mr. Murali. To prove it, he made his student Master. Jothi Krishna, a specially challenged child to play drums. His passion to music was immeasurable. He rocked the show that morning, he heard his master playing the drums and just gives back the same music to the audience. His performance was admirable and heart touching. He turned to be an inspiration to all that day.
Towards the end, Mr. Murali gave a lecture on exploring the music and how each of us can get related to the wonderful world of music that we are surrounded by. Finally, The first Beyond The Classroom activity of ‘Exploring Music from within & beyond us’ seems to be a useful and productive initiative taken by alchemy to give the experimental learning experience to their students. It was ended with a National Anthem, followed by dispersing students and parents in an organised manner.
