by Allijah Motika '14

Here we go again! So ... today and yesterday have been insane. There isn't any other way to describe it.

Yesterday none of the faculty arrived until the last session of the night from 7:30 to 9:00 and it was so frustrating waiting and waiting for them to get here. We were told that they'd arrive at 1:30, 3:45, and 4:30 before the real time of 7:30 actually happened. So in other words yesterday was a huge tease. But since Bobby McFerrin has gotten here it's been incredible. I don't have the energy to go into all the details of the workshop right now but the biggest part of it (which would seem obvious because the name of the workshop is "Circle Songs with Bobby McFerrin") are the circle songs.

A circle song is an improvisational technique encouraging group singing. It is led by one center figure and all the participants gather in a circle around that individual. The leader then gives a phrase to each individual voice part; one at a time, and then a song is created out of those layers. The leader completely improvises and it is SO COOL!!

So like I said I won't explain much detail but the two big moments of my day were: 1. A MUCH needed hour long massage to try and fix my aching back from the 17 hour car-ride (I know my math was wrong in the last blog, oops!) and 2. I improvised with Bobby McFerrin and another faculty member today! It was just us three in front of the whole workshop. I beatboxed and it turned into a rap with the main theme of joining the circus haha. Another workshopee told me that they got a video of the improvisation so hopefully (cross your fingers) I'll be able to get that and share it with all of you!

So that's basically it for now. My voice is exhausted from being sick (and I sung a lot more today than I probably should have) but my voice is finally coming back! It's been gone since Thursday so that is wonderful news especially since I'm here at a vocal workshop (great timing eh?).

Well that's all for now! Catch you in a day or two!

Allijah Motika