It’s a good week for the band, when we have something on every day, to keep us out of trouble.
Our new project in Smithfield with the Seen & Heard Carnival Group entered it’s 2nd week, and we were very impressed with a turnout of over 20 young people, all keen to get some drumming under their belts. The group has one piece of music down already, and we are confident that this group will be ready to do a couple of performances sometime soon.
The middle part of the week has been taken up with multiple visits to Castleblayney in preparation for the Muckno Mania Festival. MaSamba will have two separate roles in this event. The first is the skilling-up of a great bunch of young people to perform in a parade on Sunday. Progress has been very good so far, and we are confident that we will have 3 piece of music together with the group after just 3 workshops – great stuff!
Some of the young people from Castleblayney, preparing for their performance in the Muckno Mania Festival, 2012.
MaSamba will also be performing at the event on the Friday evening, as part of the World record attempt, which see them town trying to get the largest number of people dressed as the Incredible Hulk in one place. Obviously, all the rippling muscles amongst band members made us a shoe-in for this gig!
This week is also the last rehearsal of our own youth group before their first-ever public performance as part of the Liberties Festival, which takes place next week. As some of you will know, we completely re-vamped our youth group this year, and now have 100% new members. It is still a small group, but they are very dedicated, and we are delighted that their first performance will take place in their own locality. The group will perform at the opening of the St. James’s Hospital 6.5K Fun Run, so come along and see them if you can!
Finally, behind the scenes, we have been helping some of our colleagues from the Brasilian community in Cork to get some Brasilian drumming going in ‘the Village’. Just last night, we got an email from community music legend Evelyn Grant, which has put us on the right path there, so hopefully, it’s all systems go on that front!