Case Study 23rd Jul 2018
CE Academy sent a group of students from year 10 and 11 to our Musically Unorthodox programme at the University of Northampton. The programmes aim is to give young people the opportunity to explore a range of non-traditional musical skills such as DJing, digital instrumentation, recording, songwriting, rapping and singing, and once familiar with these skills to then create their own production.
The group organically divided into 2 groups, one being the year 10 boys and the other being year 11 girls. Working with the year 10s, at first they were a little reserved and later expressed they were unsure what to expect when their teacher told them they were being sent on a music programme. Being an activity through school they did not expect it to be what it was. They expressed they had a great interest in rapping, lyric writing and recording which they had done prior to the programme on an amateur level with friends as a pastime, but never had the opportunity to do it professionally or work with professionals. They also expressed their interest in DJing but it was something they had only seen and never tried.
Their chosen music styles of interest was Trap and Drill music. These genres have a dark, grim vibe with violent, nihilistic lyrical content. We explored how we could use these characteristics in a positive light and through discussion established, some people end up in bad circumstances due to their environment and surroundings and therefore it is not fair to tarnish everyone from these environments with the same brush.
Here is the track the written, produced and recorded. They also produced a music video of that track that will be broadcasted on the “Musically Unorthodox, online music TV show”.
