"We are a group of several musicians in Sarajevo. Some of us are students or graduates of music from the Music Academy of Sarajevo University; others come from the city's rock and pop music scene. With two people from the UK we form The Serious Road Trip team in Sarajevo."
Local TSRT staff member Bekim is greeted by a child at the Pazaric Institute for Special Needs for Sarajevo. Situated on the other side of Mount Igman, isolated from the city by the Serbian front line. For the 380 residents who survived the war and starvation (about 70 of whom are under 18), the TSRT programme is the only form of teaching they received. Summer '96.
"What we do is provide access to music for young people in Sarajevo. The majority of our work involves structured singing and percussion workshops in institutions - psychiatric hospitals, special needs schools, orphanages and normal schools. We also have a basic digital music studio in the University, which we are developing in collaboration with The Drake Music Project in Britain, as a music centre with a particular interest in teaching severely physically disabled people. Drake pioneers the use of adapted switching devices and systems to provide control over improvising and composing music on computers and MIDI instruments for people with little control over movement."
"The studio is in the Faculty of Medicine, on the floor above the medical students' café bar Kuk, the city's legendary rock music venue which was a big part of our original inspiration. Kuk is again returning to its place at the centre of young peoples' lives in Sarajevo through our collaboration with the students who run the café. We work with them (and sometimes with other like-minded individuals and organisations) to produce concerts and club events by local and international artists in a safe environment. Our equipment includes a superb Turbosound PA system, and we are gradually acquiring a stock of instruments, both acoustic and electric, with which we are introducing rehearsal and instrument loan facilities to complement our ongoing project of distributing strings and other consumables which are not otherwise available or affordable to most musicians in Sarajevo. The programme has recently been offered an analogue recording studio which we hope will arrive in the next few months. Finally, we spend our "spare" time trying to highlight the needs of the institutions and organisations with whom we work: our programme attracts a lot of interest in Sarajevo with which we try to draw the attention of major donor organisations to particular predicaments and urgent requirements.
"We believe that music is one of the best ways of confronting the weirdness in our lives in Sarajevo today. Music is recreational, entertaining, and the basis for a lot of social activity. But it is also an important educational process, a powerful means of expression and communication, a human right, and potentially the most appropriate therapeutic agent for addressing the circumstances of many in the aftermath of the war in Bosnia. Our belief in the right of access to music motivates not only the workshop programme, but also the policies of affordable, equal and open access to our events and resources. We also believe that music is a vital profession, and in the long term hope that as economic stability returns to Sarajevo - a passionately musical city - we can establish ourselves as a self-sustaining local non-profit organisation, to manage our resources on a commercial basis as well, so that we can maintain all of our other activities on a professional basis. To do all of that, we believe, we need training, experience, resources, and support. That is why we joined The Serious Road Trip team in Sarajevo ..."
"A typical day begins at 8am at the TSRT flat near the Music Academy with coffee, bread rolls and a brief reminder of the plan for the day's workshops. The workshops are regular : if it's a Monday we pile aboard the veteran Road Trip landrover Tessa (whose canary yellow paint and cartoon strip decorations are looking a little the worse for wear after several years of convoy work during the war; the starter motor has given up completely, but the parking space is on a steep slope ...) and drive 25km to Pazaric on the other side of Mt Igman. As we approach the gates to the Psychiatric Institute the residents, dressed in identical pink and purple tracksuits, are invariably pressed against the fence waving and cheering at us, trying to clamber on board to direct us to the parking space. We get out, shake a hundred eager hands equally willing to help carry the equipment, and take brief refuge in the office for a chat with the director, Dr Danilo, and his staff. For most of the war Danilo had only four staff; some had fled, whilst others, living in the city, were besieged, unable to cross the two frontlines between them and the Institute. Before the war there were four hundred and seventy residents and a functioning school in which music played a major part : there was a full-time music teacher and a choir that took part in festivals and competitions against "normal" schools. During the war a large number of patients died of starvation : they are buried in the grounds, their graves marked by simple wooden crosses. A few others ran away, and today there are three hundred and eighty residents, of whom about seventy are under eighteen."
China Drum, the first British band to play in Bosnia since the Dayton Accord, perform as guests in a TSRT music therapy workshop. Pazaric Special Needs institute.
"When food finally began to get through, the school building was used as a foodstore until, a few weeks ago, work began on a new foodstore building. But there is still no teaching outside of our programme, which began in the first week of March. We work with eighty people in eight groups which we have "streamed" according to ability, and there are usually four of us. One person leads, the others help. The range of abilities amongst the residents is broad: there are some children with only the mildest of learning difficulties who maybe shouldn't even be there; many have profound learning and behavioural problems, whilst others seem fundamentally to have physical disabilities but are institutionalised : there's one young man who is blind, but enjoys singing Elton John songs in English, and there are chair-bound people with cerebral palsy. One big problem is the stench in the buildings. It's rancid : the first few times we visited we were retching. Now we burn essential oils in the workshop room to overcome this."
"In the workshops we use guitar, violin, some tuned percussion and drums, tambourines, maracas, rain sticks, etc. We usually start with a greeting song, and then some songs drawn from the Bosnian curriculum for primary school music, some of which have direct English equivalents ("I am the musicman", for example). We learned our approach to group work from Bennett's example (Bennett Hogg - Programme Education Director). We work on ideas of melody, and in some cases harmony, but essentially rhythm and imagination. After some structured songs we may move into an improvisation on a theme, or a percussion session. Some of these have been extraordinary: I particularly remember one occasion when a lad of about twelve, normally hyperactive and disruptive, played an African drum for the first time. He concentrated for thirty minutes, and showed such innate ability we were astonished. His whole mood changed, as did the attitude of the rest of the group to him, first watching with disbelief and then joining in. He's really changed - and we've given him his own drum. A couple of the residents can play some folk tunes on the accordion and whistle, and many love to sing and we have learned to respond to their initiatives, develop a musical dialogue, and explore ideas."
The team have been training in techniques for group music work for people with special needs through informal seminars and workshops since March. The training is led by Bennett Hogg MA, MMus, and as well as the institutions described, projects have also been designed for The Centre for Speech and Hearing Rehabilitation, Mjedanica School for Mentally Handicapped Children, and the Bjelave Orphanage - all in Sarajevo. With the start of the new academic year in Bosnia, further projects will be launched in the National Centre for Blind and Partially Sighted People, which was totally destroyed during the war but "houses" 350 people; and in the desperate Drin Psychiatric Institute, Fojnica, 45km from Sarajevo. The new team members required for this workload will come largely from the University: Bennett, who is already lecturing in ethnomusicology and composition, has been invited to include the training elements of the programme in the music therapy curriculum supervised by Dr Selma Ferovic. For some students, the workshops will be the practical element of the course. Two of the current team are being kept on as full-time workshop leaders, whilst a third becomes full-time manager of the studio and technical resources. In addition to Programme Director Simon Glinn and Education Director Bennett Hogg a third full-time international worker will join the team. Peter Vilk, a psychology graduate and professional percussionist who has made a particular study of the psychology of structured group music workshops for people with special needs, will join the team full-time in mid-October for an initial three months period.
"It's always quite euphoric, but exhausting. Afterwards we compare notes with the staff, who have reported cases of isolated, non-communicative individuals becoming communicative again, and a general positive change. Indeed, we've seen a phenomenal change in the whole atmosphere of the Institute through what we do, it's become focussed, organised and even though to the uninitiated it might still seem an appaling place we find it somehow joyous now. We could never stop going there: the music day is the highlight of their lives. They know we come on Mondays, and it's the only regular activity they have, but now the days of the week matter again, and their lives have some kind of rhythm."
"As do ours: we get back to Sarajevo around 5.30pm, and begin planning the next day's schedule which, being a Tuesday, involves Vladimir Nazor Special School in Hrasno, a suburb about 2km from the city centre. Vladimir Nazor is a school for 80 children, the main school for autistic children in Bosnia. It also has a class of children with cerebral palsy. Before the war they had a full-time music therapist, but he's a refugee in Germany now. Being a day school it is much more structured, with the children already organised into classes, each with their own teacher..."
