A Musical Collaboration - Sparrow Village

On Saturday, I traveled with the existing Sparrow Village marimba band to begin a new partnership between Sparrow and the Soweto Marimba Youth League (read: SMYLe!).  SMYLe has been around for 7 years, and they have already toured in Canada twice.  The Sparrow marimba band began a few years ago and had one trip to the UK before their teacher stopped showing up last year.  

The organizer of SMYLe just found out about Sparrow Village a week ago, and he quickly pulled together the first joint practice this past weekend.  Neither band had played in a few months, but they performed wonderfully.  Over the next few months I look forward to seeing them perform together at events around Joburg - and I can't wait to work with some of these talented young musicians on music projects at Sparrow!

Here's a clip of the two groups combining percussion:

...and the Sparrow kids performing one of their pieces.  Recognize it?