A Delhi NGO uses music to educate street children and make them aware of their rights.
Boondon mein kaisa jadu hai/ Har din dikhaye sapne naye...,” Suraj, 14, sings aloud, his eyes shining. It’s a song written by him and his friends at Umeed, a home for runaway, abandoned and homeless street children, managed by Delhi-based NGO Aman Biradari as part of a campaign called ‘Dil Se...’
Suraj and 250 other children at the three Dil Se... homes in Delhi — the two others are called Khushi and Kilkari — have been taught to sing and write lyrics as part of Music Basti, an innovative project that Integrated Development Education Association (IDEA), a non-profit organisation, has been running since 2008. The idea is to use music to educate and raise awareness about child rights among these ‘children at risk’. The project focuses particularly on the right to expression, participation and inclusion.
“I wanted to make music accessible to socially marginalised children,” says Faith Gonsalves, founder and programme coordinator of Music Basti. “My motivation was music education as a tool for expression for poor urban kids.” Gonsalves was only 20 when she began Music Basti, but being a singer — she is part of Artistes Unlimited, a Delhi-based trust that promotes arts and artistes — and having worked with the YP Foundation (a for-the-youth, by-the-youth non-profit body), she had enough contacts to make a go of it. Along with IDEA, the YP Foundation has helped sustain Music Basti.
Local, national and international musicians have coached the kids, including Vishal Dadlani of Vishal-Shekhar and Pentagram fame; composer, lyricist, actor, screenwriter Dr Madan Gopal Singh; Brooklyn-based ragtime music group The Xylopholks; and the Yale Gospel Choir, also from the USA.
The first artist to train the children was Suhail Yusuf Khan, grandson of Sarangi maestro Ustad Sabri Khan and a member of Advaita, a psychedelic fusion rock band in Delhi. “We had never worked with children before, and were awed at their excitement on seeing and touching the instruments,” Khan recalls.
Last year, the children sang at a CRY programme and also at the South Asian Bands Festival in Delhi. Their efforts have, this year, won them the support of the Gibson Foundation (named after the company that makes the world-renowned guitars, mandolins and banjos).
The project has brought these children, — whom “people would detest brushing against on the streets, on platforms”, says Anwar, who works with Aman Biradari — a lot of pride in themselves. This is evident in their stance, as the 20 children, aged between eight and 22, pore over the lyrics and listen attentively as the conductors tune their chords to begin the session.
Their instructors belong to Five 8, a rock band from Kirori Mal College. Says Five 8 guitarist Adhir Ghosh, who has been associated with Music Basti since its inception in 2008, “For the first time, our band is training such children and composing a song in Hindi. They are quite attentive, though the little ones have a short attention span.”
Music Basti is now collaborating on a project with UK-based record producer Ian Wallman and two academics, Andrew Dubber and Jez Collins, from the Centre for Media and Cultural Research at Birmingham City University. The three are recording the songs composed by the children, which will be compiled into an album and released online on Musicbasti.org and Bandcamp.com in August.
Next on the agenda is learning instruments — the guitar, to start with.
“The children have taught me a lot. It’s like making a new beginning,” says
Five 8 vocalist Robin Mathew, as he begins to belt out a racy Hindi film number on popular demand. Suraj dances on dreamy-eyed. The boy, who only a year ago had been wandering the streets and making Rs 50 a day selling kabadi (scrap), hopes to be a singer some day.
| LEARNING THROUGH THE ARTS
PVR Nest, the CSR wing of PVR, is running the CineART (Cinema and Art for Social Change) programme for the second year now. The programme uses painting and cinema to educate children — many from underprivileged families — about issues around them. ‘Nature’ is the theme this year, and around 200 children have been selected; they will get to make their own films on nature, which will be shown at PVR theatres on Children’s Day this year. |
Going Solo, a UK-based non-profit organisation, uses theatre and music to improve the lives of street children in Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi. Earlier this year, it mounted its first production, Angels with Dirty Faces, a hip-hop Oliver Twist meshed with Romeo and Juliet, on stages across the capital.
Music Basti, Integrated Development Education Association, c/o 144, Munirka Vihar, New Delhi www.musicbasti.com
