Category Archives: Music

African Drumming at the Shetland Music Festival

On Wednesday, 14th of March we went to Mareel to participate in the Shetland Music Festival.

After going to Mareel on the bus we walked up the stairs and into the cinema. The screen was showing footage from a camera in the auditorium (where everyone was playing their instruments).

Each class got a row of seats to sit in whilst watching other classes, before performing themselves. After listening to a few classes songs and eating our snacks Joy gave us a choice of having coloured fabrics as headbands, skirts or other things.

Later on we learned that we had to go and play because our bus would be there soon.

We went out of the cinema into a long room where you could look over a wall and see other people getting juice, coffee and tea (or other things). The room had two couches and a few tables. We only stayed in the room for a bit before going through a door and walking into the green room to get ready. Although it was called the green room, the only thing that was green was the couches. There were instruments on shelves and a piano in the corner. On the walls were grey cuboids that looked like mattresses. We went through a door and down some stairs to fetch our drums from a storage cupboard.  Next we headed to the stage curtains to wait for the people on stage to finish.

We then headed onto the stage and there where two judges and some other people sitting on seats watching.

We began to play Salsa Jagbe, we started off quiet and began to get louder which built up suspension. We went through the whole routine without any mistakes except for speeding up at the end when not supposed to, but it didn’t matter because the judges didn’t know that!

Preforming our song.

The adjudicator (judge) decided that we deserve first place (gold).

Our award and the judges notes.

Once we were done we left to go to the ferry back to Whalsay and walked back to the school.

Sanna and Ava