Musical bridge from NCES to the antipodes

NORTH CANAAN — Joshua Stone begins to play the piano and the children sitting in a circle on the floor begin to move. It doesn’t matter what he plays; even the shy ones who try to hold back get wiggly. Some are on their knees and swinging their arms to the rhythm.

Music truly is a universal language. One can imagine children halfway around the world responding the same way — which is what is likely to happen in a collaborative project that Stone will edit into a music video, “The Myth of Songlines.” 

Stone describes it as a “cross-cultural collaboration between Ashley DeMazza’s first-grade class at NCES and the students of Cathy Langley at St. Joseph’s School in Ashburton, New Zealand.”

English may be their common language, but these students will also connect on a different level.

“Songs connect everyone to everyone else,” is the motto of Stone’s Song Book World, which is producing the project. 

Stone visited NCES for the second time last week. The students were excited to see him and asked questions about the plans for the half-hour session. 

Stone will be back one more time to finish collecting multi-media originals, such as comments, made-up songs and drawings from the youngsters. 

It will be edited with recordings from their New Zealand counterparts into their interpretation of “The Myth of Songlines.”

Songlines are part of the aboriginal story of how the world was sung into creation during the Dreamtime. 

Stone brought a pile of drawings from New Zealand students of their interpretations of trees. NCES students drew animals and made maps of anything they wanted, such as their school, bedrooms and the beach. 

All will be part of the music video.

“Write about anything you want. Put the words on paper and it becomes a song when you sing it,” one student said, when the class was asked to define a song.

Among last week’s recorded activities was the singing by students of their names to the beat of a Turkish drum called a darbuka, and again to piano melodies that expressed various emotions.

Stone told the children he always loved music and based his life around it.

“There are feelings in music you can’t express in words,” he said. “Music is bigger than just the words themselves.”

Stone is a Falls Village resident who has won an Emmy and other awards for his work in composing music for television and film. He  is a teaching artist registered with the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism.