Last week, Sergio Martinez, a percussionist from Spain and professor at the Berklee College of Music, came to our school to teach our 4th and 5th grade percussion students about flamenco music.
He taught them the history of flamenco, specifically about Africa’s influence on flamenco music, and how to clap out two different flamenco beats. The students had so much fun playing beats together!
Thank you so much to Mr. Martinez and to our Resident Artist Gerami Groover, who brought him to the school on behalf of her own artist collective project, Gerami Groover Presents. Ms. Groover will be organizing a workshop event for our students in February with Juancristobal Aliaga from Chile and Thamsanqa “KrTC of Hip Hop” Sibandze of Swaziland, where these artists will be teaching our middle school students lessons titled “Chile’s Music and Artists’ Response to Authoritarian Regime” and “The Fundamentals of Hip Hop and its Powerful Use for Youth Empowerment in the Continent of Africa”. Juancristobal and Thamsanqa will be working specifically with our 6th and 8th graders. These workshops will feed into the music integration for the 6th and 8th grade expeditions authoritarian resistance and the school-to-prison pipeline. Professor Martinez will return in the spring to continue working with our students, and Ms. Groover will continue to bring artists to Conservatory Lab in an effort to inspire artistic and social responsibility in our students.