Making Music

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.