Music for change

A unique outreach programme is using music as tool for improving the lives of marginalised students

A group of teenagers sits in a circle. One pulls out a guitar, another begins to clap rhythmically. All hum the notes of a shared song about the world of their dreams, a world that is egalitarian, diverse and based on mutual respect. The lyrics are heartfelt — and self-composed.  Listeners aren’t surprised when they learn that the musicians are all students who live in a Delhi slum.
 
“Music helps them to express their deepest hopes and fears,” says Faith Gonsalves, the young founder of Music Basti, a unique outreach programme that uses music training as a tool for improving confidence, expressiveness and academic outcomes in children between seven and 17 years of age. Indeed, as the students, all a part of Music Basti, sing their anthem, it is clear that music has helped them find a voice in a world that is often deaf to their condition.
 
“With a group of musician friends, I thought of starting a music programme for children from Delhi’s slums in 2008, because this integral part of their education was being neglected,” she says.
 
For the first five years, theirs was a volunteer-driven model. This changed in 2012, when Music Basti hired trained teachers for ReSound, their flagship one-year programme in which students learn music theory — as well as get the chance to compose their own songs for the annual concert. Since then, Music Basti has trained over 850 students, mostly from urban slums and migrant families with low literacy levels. Students in the programme learn to sing to the world about their lives and find a creative outlet for their feelings.  Parvati, a Music Basti student for the last three years, puts it beautifully in one of their videos: “I sing when I’m happy, and sometimes I find that even when I’m sad or lonely, these feelings turn into a song on my lips.”
 

A girl who is part of the Music Basti programme playing the guitar

Every year in the programme, students choose a different theme to interrogate their circumstances with. To date, students have created 28 original songs on themes such as female feticide, Right to Education, diversity and gender equality. “We also like to expose them to different genres of music, and have, for instance, taken them to listen to jazz at the US Embassy,” says Gonsalves. Additionally, Music Basti is continually training and building capacities of its teachers, having trained over 100 so far in its evolving pedagogy.
 
There is compelling evidence that Music Basti’s programme is doing much more than simply teaching children music. “We see a sense of community develop; many of our older students now teach younger children in their communities on their own accord,” says Gonsalves. “Teachers in the government schools we work in also tell us students have become more receptive and that their attention spans have improved.”
 
In late 2016, a group of Music Basti member even performed at the Global Citizen concert in Mumbai, alongside the well-known band, Coldplay.
 
Gonsalves and her cohorts are also working with nine government and low income private schools on a pilot music education program, funded by the Netherlands-based Enabling Leadership Foundation. “We don’t think of it as a talent program — we’re using music as a tool to develop key life skills,” says she. In each class students explore forms of music and do teambuilding exercises.
 
Through ReSound and their school programmes, Music Basti hasn’t simply demonstrated that the lack of creative music education is an important lacuna in our government school system, it has also shown that music can be a powerful, transformative tool for social change. It is now looking to expand its reach to other government schools, and beyond. “A class of 20 students by two teachers costs about Rs 1 lakh per annum for us to run,” says Gonsalves. “So our expansion plans depend largely on the quantum of sponsorship we’re able to raise in the year ahead.”
 
Meanwhile, another batch of bright-eyed youngsters is gearing up to sing its songs at Music Basti’s concert on February 26. They represent the immense potential of youth action; their voices, a significant bellwether of current social trends. If only more people would listen to them.

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Learn more at www.musicbasti.org or visit their page on Facebook. Follow their music on the Music Basti channel on YouTube
Next, the story of some young women who have celebrated Valentine’s Day since 2010 with martial arts training camps for girls