Hello! Welcome to The Ten Spot. I'm going to talk about when our class took part in a French language spoons workshop and learned about traditional spoons music!
When
we went into the art room there were a bunch of chairs set up, a CD player, and
a bucket of wooden spoons. Mr. Sametz, our spoons instructor, first asked if anybody
played musical instruments and about half the class said yes. He showed us how
to do some basic beats with spoons he passed out–1,2,3 1,2,3
1,2,3,4,5,6,7. When Mr. Sametz
showed us the beat we were hitting the spoons on our knee and hand, but after
we got the hang of it he showed us a different way of doing by sliding it down
our wrist to our thumb, pointer finger, middle finger, ring finger, pinky, and
then bouncing it off our knee and hand. After we learned those two tricks we
played with fiddle folk music.
We
played the song until it was halfway done, but then Mr.
Sametz asked
who played guitar, and picked our classmate and friend Paula. He got her to sit
in one of the chairs beside him and gave her a washboard to play, and showed
everyone else how to play another beat by using our elbows and shoulders. But
instead of playing it with fiddle folk music, we played it to country music.
Lastly, before we were about to leave, Mr. Sametz picked three people me (Emma B.), Rowan, and
Alijah, to sit in the chairs beside him. He gave us costumes to wear, then he
got all of us to play the spoons to the awesome song “What Does the Fox Say.”
Mr. Sametz spoke to us in French throughout the workshop. He
took us on a mini-musical tour of Sénégal,
Québec, l'Acadie, Cajune and l'Afrique. It was an awesome experience learning about a bit
about these cultures and playing the spoons too!
By:
Emma
B.
