Tembang Rudyard Kipling Oh, East is East, And West is West, And never the twain shall meet dijaman cyber age sekarang tampaknya tidak berlaku lagi. Karena dengan video-conferencing anak sekolah di New York dan anak sekolah di New Delhi dapat berjingkrak-jingkrak mengikuti irama musik timur dan barat, serta dapat bersahut-sahutan satu sama lain secara real-time. Bacalah cerita dibawah ini.
Salam, RM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- December 8, 2004 Culturally Worlds Apart, Children Touch Musically By MELINE TOUMANI A favorite platitude of concerned New Yorkers these days is to lament the downfall of arts education, in a city where the arts are everything. But the news is not all bad, and at Zankel Hall on Friday, New York City public school students cashed in on their privileged location. This event, in Carnegie Hall's annual series Global Encounters, was far from just another field trip to see the symphony. It was a simulcast music exchange in which 450 students in New York and 200 more in New Delhi listened to music together, chatted with one another and danced, with the help of a 22-foot-wide movie screen and some good speakers. As the season opener for a distance-learning project devised by the Weill Music Institute, Carnegie Hall's educational arm, the presentation suggested that world music may be the new lingua franca between the arts establishment and diverse city students. It also showed how high-band-width video-conferencing technology can transform social studies and musical collaboration. The event's host, Nick Spitzer, who produces the public-radio music show "American Routes," welcomed the New York students with an ambitious directive: "Our job is to make New York look good, and make America look good. This is a great chance to talk to the world." A moment later, they were doing just that. The huge screen in Zankel Hall came to life with a real-time broadcast from the Sai International Center in New Delhi, where Indian students dressed in sharp blazers and ties gathered under the direction of the renowned Indian drummer Sandeep Das. Mr. Das and Mr. Spitzer greeted each other over the screen, and suddenly several hundred teenagers sat up. Even in the era of Internet and cell phones, this was pretty cool. The students in both countries had been learning about each other's music, dance and history for several weeks in preparation for the live exchange. So the Americans knew they were hearing southern Indian music when they watched a 13-year-old violinist, Ambi Subramanian, playing live in New Delhi along with musicians on the mrindangam, a double-headed drum; the ghatam, a clay-pot-style drum; and the morsing, or jew's-harp. The Indian students were similarly primed when a four-piece bluegrass band took the New York stage for a demonstration of traditional Appalachian music. As the group fiddled, it seemed entirely possible that the music - not to mention hillbilly culture, as portrayed in a short video - was as foreign to the New York students as to those in India. Hollis Headrick, the director of the Weill Music Institute, points out that this emphasis on regionalism and on avoiding stereotypes is the key to this season's Global Encounters, a project now bolstered by the technological resources of Zankel Hall. Mr. Headrick said that Mr. Das, who has worked with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project, wanted Indian students to see that there is more to American music than MTV. Exposing students to northern and southern music in India alongside northern and southern music in America was one way to explore the complexity of regionalism. To that end Friday's program also included documentaries about each country's geography, a northern Indian giddha dance set to live music in New Delhi and a New Orleans brass band that strutted up the aisle of Zankel Hall playing explosive jazz. David Johnson, a social studies teacher at Martin Van Buren High School in Queens Village, attended with 30 of his students. Mr. Johnson, who has participated in three previous distance-learning events through Global Encounters, called the high-tech spectacle "an apotheosis" in comparison with a straightforward concert or a dry classroom discussion. With the students allowed to communicate directly with their peers - as happened here when students on both sides lined up to ask each other questions about music, dance and life - they are "awakened to their role in the world and in New York City," Mr. Johnson said. Meanwhile, as Mr. Das played tabla alongside Amar Ali Banglash on the sarod, a fretless string instrument, it became evident that the bluegrass and the Hindustani music had things in common: the combination of sweetly whining strings and rhythmic adrenaline, and a certain understated balance, with no particular instrument hogging attention. Mr. Das compared his tabla playing with the sound of the subway rumbling alongside Zankel Hall: "Here comes the train from New Delhi to New York," he shouted over the screen, and tore into a rattling crescendo, which captured perfectly the event's relentless excitement. The finale was a jam session over the oceans. The musicians in New Delhi established a rhythm, the bluegrass band in Zankel Hall gradually matched it, and eventually the brass band worked its way into the mix. Soon everybody was playing "Sweet Georgia Brown." A troupe of dancers in New Delhi twirled to the familiar refrain, their hands in the air, and the principal of Delhi Public School, Dwarka joined them as the American students clapped in time. Global Encounters will continue at Zankel Hall through the spring, with professional development courses for New York teachers, a simulcast choir rehearsal involving students in three states in January and an interactive musical game between students in New York and Hawaii in February. The New York Times ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $4.98 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/Q7_YsB/neXJAA/yQLSAA/BRUplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> *************************************************************************** Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny. www.ppi-india.uni.cc *************************************************************************** __________________________________________________________________________ Mohon Perhatian: 1. 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