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| Learning by note |
| Gururaj Jamkhandi / Jan 15, 2012, 00:05 IST |
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At a free school started by three Canadians and a sitar maestro, music is part of the students’ day.
Surrounded by farms, on a hillock 16 km from Dharwad is an unusual school. Kalkeri Sangeet Vidyalaya (KSV) is a quiet place on three acres. Its buildings are traditional cottages made from local and eco-friendly materials.
Visit in the morning and you will hear music emanating from the cottages. Some of the pupils are singing, some playing the sitar and others the tabla, bansuri or harmonium. They are six to 20 years old, and half of the total of nearly 200 are girls.
All the students are from marginalised and disadvantaged backgrounds, from rural families around Dharwad. About a quarter are SC/ST, three-fifths are OBC, and 90 per cent are from “below the poverty line” families. The school does not charge its students anything, and provides food, shelter, clothing, health care and education — in academics as well as Hindustani classical music — free of cost.
After their morning music class, the children are given breakfast and then get ready for their academic classes. Those studying in the 1st to the 10th standards attend classes on the premises, while those in pre-university courses go to Dharwad. After school hours the students gather to play until dark. Then they attend computer or painting classes, and then study some more. KSV follows the Karnataka syllabus in Kannada medium.
Why is music at the centre of KSV’s programme? The three founders of the school, French Canadians Mathieu, Blaise and Agathe Fortier, are passionate about Hindustani classical. Dharwad is a centre of Hindustani classical, and Mathieu and Agathe Fortier came here to study music in 2001. They started KSV in 2002 — with the help of sitar artist Hameed Khan.
“Ustad-ji is one of the four founders of KSV,” says KSV’s present director, Adam Woodward. Khan now “comes once a week or when he can to teach the KSV sitar students. We anticipate that he will take a more active role in KSV after his retirement in one or two years.”
Other leading regional musicians visit the school regularly to teach. B S Math teaches violin and Ravi Kudalgi teaches tabla. Both are AIR A-grade artists.
Also around 2002, the Fortiers set up the Young Musicians of the World Trust (YMW) in Canada, to help support KSV. YMW started an evening music school in Quebec. KSV still depends on overseas money. Its annual budget for 2012-13 is Rs 70 lakh, and all activities are paid for by fundraising. But “support from YMW has been decreasing year by year and is now only 20 per cent”, says Woodward.
“Once KSV is on its own, Young Musicians of the World can fund similar projects in other parts of the world,” he adds. “Now YMW’s mission is to found music schools in different countries and to teach the traditional music of the respective country. As Canada is the centre of the fundraising activities and the location of YMW’s head office that is where most of the expansion has been taking place. There are now four schools in Canada. They cater to disadvantaged students in the evenings, weekends and school holidays. There are preliminary plans and talks to start schools in Mali, France and Brazil.”
Volunteers from around the world come to teach or work at the school for short stints. “They also help the children learn English,” says Woodward, “and from the children’s point of view, this aspect of being around people from other countries opens their minds, arouses their curiosity and familiarises them with many different cultures — all important values in their social development.” Permanent teachers, however, are locals — 11 teach academic subjects, 12 teach music and one teaches Bharatanatyam.
How did the founders convince parents to send their children to this unconventional school? “By going door to door locally,” says Woodward. “After a year or two the children started to achieve results in academics and music.” Last year KSV got 250 applications — so there is now a selection process. This includes a home visit by staff members, “to get a clearer picture of the family’s situation. The size of the house, number of rooms, number of inhabitants, the size of land, number of cattle, amount of furniture, luxury items, etc., are all taken into consideration. It is also a good opportunity to see the children in their natural environment and their behaviour within their family.”
Since many students join young, in 1st standard, musical aptitude is not considered. Yet the director estimates that 1-2 per cent go on to become professional artists, and for the rest, he says, “the fact that they have learnt music throughout their education will have had a strong and positive impact upon their academic studies”.
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