Sea Slugs at School

Sax player Rob Kitney (year 3) tells us what Southampton-based band The Sea Slugs were up to just before the break:

On Friday 7^th March, The Sea Slugs made their way to Crawley to lead a workshop in afrobeat music with the year 9s at Hazelwick School. As a brief introduction to The Sea Slugs, we are a 15-piece afrobeat band, many of whom are currently studying at the University or have graduated in recent years.

This was one of the first workshops the Slugs have conducted, and was as much of a learning experience for us as it was for the pupils. We pitched up shortly after 9am, to be confronted by 30 or so year 9s wielding a spectacular array of percussion instruments. After a (very) brief history lesson on the roots of the genre, we picked up our instruments to play ‘Dirty Money’ by Antibalas. The year 9s turned out to be quite a daunting audience to perform to, but during the course of the song we invited them to get up out of their seats, pick up some percussion and dance. Getting 30 year 9s to dance in a classroom at 9am is a tall order, but they did a great job, and we certainly felt less intimidated by them afterwards.

After this, we introduced the class to a couple of Fela Kuti songs, ‘Water No Get Enemy,’ and ‘Egbe Mi O.’ A number of the students played instruments, and augmented The Sea Slugs’ ranks with extra bass, guitars, keyboards, trombones, singers and violins, who each tried their hand at improvising while the rest of the class provided a solid percussion backing. Our combined efforts made enough noise to result in a teacher abandoning her lesson in a room down the hall and bringing her class to the music room to join in. We considered this a great achievement, as by this point there were around 70 of us in the room sharing the music.

The year 9s’ enthusiasm made for a fantastically enjoyable workshop, and we have hopes of doing many more of these in the future. Thanks to Hazelwick School for having us!

 

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