My son, Andrew, posted this two weeks ago, the day after St. Patrick's Day. This is just a portion of his post. For those of you who don't know, he received a fulbright fellowship to pursue his project, Stories of Aids through music. I thought I'd try and recap, but I couldn't edit it without you missing the amazing images I had as I read it.......Photos were taken by his girlfriend, Kaitlin Houlditch-Fair. His blog is http://fulbright.mtvu.com/author/andrewmagill/
....The first school was a Catholic school of 350 young children. As soon as we walked in hundreds of children flooded in with chairs and in a frenzy assembled the haphazard rows, each one vying to put their chair closest to the stage. The Catholic parish priest, a charming Irish ex-pat of 40 years in Malawi explained to them in Chichewa what each instrument was and we all obliged him by giving little impromptu demos of what we played: accordion, bodhran (Irish frame drum), wooden flute, guitar, and fiddle. Two of the lads got up to dance the St. Patrick’s Day set dance and the kids were beside themselves. So naturally we invited them up to dance. For our last two sets I struggled to find space to bow as the stage began to fill with more and more little bodies flailing, kicking up dust, and screaming in their tiny sopranos. By the end we were literally all standing on our chairs wheezing on the dust being kicked up by hundreds of legs.
That afternoon we went to a school where we played for 400+ boys in their school yard. Again we did our little instrument demos. Again we gave them several sets of rousing good tunes. This time, some of the students got up and played us a song, a hip-hop rap about HIV/AIDS awareness and responsible sex. The age ranges here were from about 5 to 15 and the older boys were clearly kings of their school… dancing and singing this song about HIV as hundreds of smaller faces cheered them on. The boy strumming the guitar had literally never played a real guitar but played it with surprising facility. Evidently he had fashioned himself a two-string guitar out of scrap parts and fishing line at home and was giddy at the opportunity to hold a real guitar. By our last set of Irish tunes the boys had descended on us and we felt as if we were at the center of a mosh pit. Imagine 400 boys bursting with excitement all clamoring for a front row patch of grass to dance to the music we were playing. By the time we left the Irish contingent had achieved celebrity status. It was all I could do to hold on to my fiddle as the boys mobbed each one of us in delight......
I try to imagine the excitement, looking at the sea of smiles, and hear the roar of "Bring it on!" from these boys in the picture. There's so much music in these boys that have yet to be birthed in ways they have not dreamed possible... yet. Every child should be able to go crazy with the power of music and what it can stir deep within the spirit. I am delighted Andrew was able to share the moment with these beautiful boys...and I smile thinking of the many more moments he hopes to share with them, and others like them.
