In April and May Reddam House schools across South welcomed composer mentor and all-round musical creative, Karien De Waal, as Artist in Residence.
Karien De Waal is an enthusiastic, all-round creative with a passion for helping the next generation develop their natural talents in music. After studying marketing, she pursued her dream of becoming a composer, which saw her accepted into Berklee. Four and a half years later, she returned to Cape Town with a seed deep in her heart to make a difference. In 2018, after freelancing in the music industry for a season, she founded JOIN BANDS NOT GANGS, a non-profit company that equips and trains youth in at-risk communities as a way to bring peace to gang-ridden communities through music.
Karien was named as one of South Africa’s “100 Young Mandelas” of 2019. She was also awarded a Triga Ventures Fellowship in 2020. Karien is currently working on an online song-writing course to be released in 2021. She describes herself as your average chilled-out Capetonian, who loves nature, music, and people.
Three days of Inspiration
Artist in Residence visits by Berklee (USA) artists provide the opportunity for Inspired students to engage first-hand with experienced musicians. Reddam House has selected to work on ‘It’s All in the Song’ – an opportunity for students to explore creative expression through the processes and techniques involved in writing and performing a song from conception to completion.
Artist in Residence visits for ‘It’s All in the Song’ sessions will address song form, generating and writing to titles, concept ideation, narrative development, and lyrical concepts such as rhyme, proxy words, and pre-writing techniques. Song-writing technique sessions focus on pre-writing techniques such as generating song titles, making word lists, and creating rhyming options, and helping students begin the song-writing process by establishing material to draw upon for the compositional process. Through Guided Collaborations, students are guided to create a safe space to write lyrics together as a group, improvise in the moment, set lyrics to melodies, and choose ideas and themes that seem to ‘stick’, refining them into an official setting for the lyrics. Performances by the Artist in Residence and selected students will kick off and wrap up each visit.
This exclusive partnership with Berklee has successfully spanned across Inspired schools globally since 2019, with artists assigned from Berklee’s award-winning faculty, student, and alumni base, who work with Inspired school faculties and students to develop contemporary music, dance, theatre, and creative education programs and experiences at participating schools.
Students, teachers and parents were delighted to welcome Karien De Waal as part of this pioneering artists-in-residence program.
