Today, we got to premier Let’s Make a Change, written by my afterschool group at Donegan School. It was in the middle of the school’s winter concert, so I sat through the choral group and the instrumental group with their songs. Not to bad.
The instrumental teacher introduced himself as a fan from his primary days at Fountain Hill ES here in town. He remembered clearly The Cat Came Back. That was cool, but I had to tell him that, during the pandemic, I was asked not to play that song because of its racist roots. He agreed that that was strange.
I had set up my small amplifier and mike on stage ahead of time and my turn rolled around. I brought up my kids, taught the assembly crowd the chorus and away we went. The kids tried some of the hand motions to the lyrics but I was concentrating on the words and my presentation. It went off fairly smoothly, and, as we had planned, when we hit the final chorus, the gang picked up scarves and headed out into the audience. It turned out to be quite a nice touch, and as they returned to the stage, we had our ‘big’ ending. Scarves up in air at the final crunch. That went well.
A good conclusion to the five week residency. The song could have been better but I think the kids had a good time as we played rhyming games, fine-tuned the lyrics and added movements. I had hoped for more of the kids’ contribution to the body of the song, but things are decidedly different post-Covid.