At Mutual Appreciation Society. We are exploring our Spotify song list from Friday Morning Music Class. Every week I play 14 or 15 tracks. We make a decision on what we like and dislike. If we like songs we sing all the way through. We check for singability, danceability, playability with instruments and if we enjoy that it will be added to a new playlist called the Mutual Appreciation Society.
What I'm also doing when I am checking on this is to look for gaps in the knowledge of our participants. And also looking to see what people are familiar with. So a lot of the time our people already have a knowledge of music, which is wonderful. But then there's also surprising things I learned about our participants who have a fondness for music that I had no idea. That they liked that particular style of music. Then I know, okay, well, we'll add more of that music to our list so that we can explore and expand and see if they like that and if other people like that. And if they do, then we'll add more of that music to the list, see what sparks. And then we will also look to see if they don't like it, we'll do a collective vote, don't like it? Then we'll quickly move on and that song will be excluded from our new song list like it was never there in the first place. It is very easy to tell when it is a song that people don't vibe with.
Creating the environment
There is a couple of things that we do which I think is really important. We set up our space that in a very inclusive way, often in a full circle, instruments available, from boomwhackers to shakers, tambourines, drums, ukulele, if that's what people wanted, we also have microphones so that people can sing and we also use spare maracas for singing so that there's more than one microphone available.
We've also had to teach practices of sharing so that we can co share the microphone, existing microphone that we have. Sometimes we have used poi with traditional Maori song. Also fabrics for creating different movements. and we've also just employed awesome dance skills and connecting with each other
First and foremost, these sessions are about joy and connection being with each other and. Enjoying celebrating what people bring forth in themselves and creativity and expression when different artists are being brought forward in our music list through the speaker.
I have seen amazing transformations happen in the duration of this work. I've seen people start to come out of their shell. Those who don't normally, sing. I have seen expressive physicalisation and actual dancing. It's been wonderful to know that even though we markedly changed how we are doing this work and we're connecting in a different way, it is still valuable for our participants. And one last thing I would say is that. Not on Fridays anymore. We are now on Wednesdays in the middle of the morning, so it's a totally different group of people and things have completely changed from a connectivity point of view. But it's really fun and we're enjoying spending time with each other.