Music Jamming at Nepal 2

May 21, Kathmandu Nepal

We spent our second day at one of the local school tucked away on a hill in a suburb of Kathmandu. Most of the classroom are without lightbulb, utilizing the fade sunlight that’s shining into the window.

We prepared a music program as one of the after school program in one of the darkest classroom. Standing in front of the classroom, one can barely see the face of the students.

It’s a Christian school and we were preparing to lead some worship on guitar and mini djemebe. Didn’t carry the big suitcase of instrument with us today but a few percussion due to the 15 mins hike involved to get to the school.

Little did we know that when the music started, it went wild and couldn’t be stopped. From simple worship to improvisation of pop songs. The sound of music filled the dark room and leaked to the rest of the school, it’s contagious, attracting other students to peak in from the window.

I saw a few of them closing their eyes, soaking in the worship music, the boys in front were fighting for the chance to accompany the music with some small percussion and the mini djemebe offered.

Their musicality surprised me, they need no warm up, a few who rushed out in turns for the djemebe poured all their energy right into the instrument the very first second the person touched it, resulting in an accompanying rhythm that captured all the nuances I was playing on the guitar. A regular untrained person would normally go up to a djemebe and do a steady pulse of 1 2 3 4, a trained musician who’s not a percussionist would normally give a simple rhythm that simulate a bass on first and snare on third. There kids here picked up the nuances of the strumming pattern from the guitar, filling in all the gaps between a 1 2 3 4 into a 1xxx 2xxx 3xxx 4xxx with syncopation and accents that simulate a full drum kit.

I was totally blown away by their musicality.

The group worship finished, the principle usher the younger students to go home, leaving the older one in the classmate who want to stay behind. They already have the instruments in their hands, eager for the music to continue. Without a word, we started improvising. Their spirit were so high that really drove the music, one of the boys decided to use the guitar box as a drum , another using the table to tap out the rhythm, two on shakers and rattle, one on guitar along with mine. From improvisation we moved onto pop song after pop song, I was so surprised by the amount of western songs they know, from Beatles to Imagine Dragon they know them all.

Thanks to internet, music skills can be easily acquired for those who has the passion, these boys actually self learned everything from YouTube in just a few months. However their musicality and skills already way surpasses the regular crowd that put years of attempted learning but still complain about how their finger hurts. Music does tests one’s will power, passion and endurance level.

This is the type of music making that really revitalize someone’s soul. As simple as a guitar and a guitar box and some small percussions are already enough to execute the full power of music.