We Do Adventure

Don't miss the nuance of the colon: the video is called Happy, and we didn't film or edit it. Rowan, however, did lend her smiling face and improvisational dance skills to the project. Internet people will probably have heard about Happy, the song from Despicable Me 2 by Pharrell Williams. You can watch the original version on the IamOTHER Youtube channel . If that's not enough for you there is 24 hour version , split into hour-long movies on the same channel. It's a genius way to prove a viral concept doesn't have to be short and sweet. Far from the streets of LA, this dance response comes from the streets of historic Jajce, in Central Bosnia. The project was organised by volunteers at the Omladinski Centar, the local youth centre in town. The video was uploaded yesterday and as I'm writing this has just under two thousand views. That's good going. Judging by the number of people we're seeing share it on Facebook that's just the beginning. Enjoy ...

Lest our last post read as some sort of rant against English language music let us redress the balance. Last weekend we got to see the powerful impact some properly performed pop can have on people's imagination. The video below is a short clip of Chip Kendall and DJGalactus Jack encouraging teenagers in Mostar to Solve It On The Dancefloor. It proves that language barriers don't get in the way if the energy is right, and that people from all different backgrounds can put their differences aside and party together. It may be presumptuous to suggest such moments solve deep-seated social issues but they have to help build a better tomorrow. So much of our behaviour, individually and as communities, is governed by emotional reactions to events; positive emotions from a shared experience have to be a good thing. It was a night they won't forget. The young people we know are asking for copies of this music which shows the moment may well live on for a long time yet.

The main reason our blog had been sitting unattended was work winning the battle for attention. Part of what we do here is work with the Evangelical Church of Bosnia and Herzegovina on youth work projects. This includes summer camps and conferences. Anyone who has ever been to a Christian camp will probably have experienced singing of some sort or another: maybe camp-fire songs, maybe things that sound like they come from the Bible, maybe tunes that sound like they came off the radio. The English speaking world has hundreds of artists producing all this and more. The Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian speaking world doesn't. All of that to say the work in question - producing new music recordings – is something that needs to happen more here. Music is such an important form of expression; we don't want young people to miss out on the chance to sing things they mean in their own language. People can, and do, translate English language songs and sing them. Sometimes they work, but of...

On Friday night we took a group of young people to Zagreb to see Martin Smith and Matt Redman in concert. We first saw Martin Smith when we were teenagers too. His songs, and the music of Delirious, have been a big influence. Sometimes it's easy to forget how big but there's nothing like the live experience to jog the memory; no escape from the weird and wonderful joy of revisiting the familiar in another time and another place. Context may change but truth doesn't for those who want to be History Makers . The focus my be different but the passion still comes from a heart that burns with that Obsession . Taking It Wherever It Goes was what they used to say. Back then we didn't expect it to bring us to this point, but here we are...happy we still have the energy and desire to out dance the teenagers on God's Great Dance Floor !

I guess it was iTunes that began the new music Tuesday thing. I'm sure the back in the days when Our Price existed you'd go and buy new singles on a Monday. Times change and Tuesday's it is. While I can have few complains about iTunes' service the Tuesday thing is slightly annoying. Monday's are often a day off – we work most weekends – and therefore an ideal day to go previewing new releases. Obviously, I'm ultimately the winner the way things are as the chance of impulse buying a new release is effectively removed. And for that my wallet is thankful! Throughout this summer Tuesdays are our music day. We didn't want to stop music courses altogether over the holidays so we set aside Tuesdays as the day to teach. This morning I've taught keyboards, guitar and bass guitar. I will be back in this evening for more lessons. All of us on the Novi Most team in Jajce teach music, all of us have students at different levels. Some came to us with a little ...

Over ten years ago now one of my brothers and I decided to convert our parents garage into a home studio. My brother had a friend with a studio on the south coast that was being forced to close. We bought the live room from them; dismantled it, transported it half an hour up the road and re-imagined the pieces into a new creative space of our inventing. Naturally, the process was slightly more drawn out than I've presented here. I'm sure our parents haven't forgotten their side of the story! The night we finished the conversion we were sitting around in the living room, probably eating celebratory ice cream. Suddenly there was a huge crash. Everyone's first thought was we must have somehow undermined the structural integrity of the house and caused some terrible disaster. We ran around looking for the problem. Nothing was wrong. Then we realised it was unusually dark outside. The problem was a late-night motorist finding the lamp post outside a near-immovable object....

It is not every morning you are shaken from your sleep by the sound of a gun fight; nor that this is immediately followed by the sound of someone running under your bedroom window; nor that you get to take a photograph like this from the comfort of your own living room. But that was last Thursday in Jajce. It was a day that was supposed to have been all about Project Avant-Guarde, a street-art project Rowan has been part of organising for the past couple of months. However a rare armed robbery, or attempted robbery , got in there early in an apparent attempt to steal its thunder. Real thunder and lightening had a go at playing with the best laid plans too. Our PA equipment got caught in a freakishly fast and heavy hail storm. For a moment I thought our mixing desk might have shipped a little too much water to work again, but careful use of kitchen towel, with the aid of gravity and a hair dryer seemed to save the day. Going into details about the Project is best saved until ...

After posting yesterday's empty stage picture I thought it good to give it some context with today's image. This is how things looked late this morning before everything kicked off outside the AVNOJ Museum. We were responsible for that kick off, rocking out as the assembled Partizans, anti-fascists and other onlookers processed back across the bridge over the river, after a wreath laying ceremony at Jajce's Partizan memorial. If there was any disappointment from the crowd it was we didn't squeeze another song in, or accept suggestions as to what it might be, before we made way for the rest of the program to continue. I did, however, get a truly Bosnian busking experience, filling in on bass guitar with a local folk singer, his school music teacher keyboard player and the sound man on drums for an interesting rendition of a traditional tune. The song was in 7/8, which might not mean much to some of you, but others will understand the challenge these presen...

It looks like it's going to be another sunny day in Jajce but I'm inside, sitting down for another of mixing. It's what I've done for the last two days; it's what I'll be doing for most of the next three days. At that point we'll assess progress and work out what needs to happen before the end of next week. You'll have to watch the video below to get the details of the project, it's enough here to say it's going well but the timeframe is tight. The looming deadline means there's little room for interruptions. However, in my experience, achieving an uninterrupted working day is a big ask in Bosnia and Herzegovina - but here's hoping!

Last Thursday we ran a second rehearsal for our music students at Novi Most Jajce. Since we started teaching guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums (and violin), at the beginning of the year, we've seen a steady increase in the number of young people wanting to learn with us. Some have tried an instrument for a few weeks and decided it's not for them, but despite that drop-off we still have more students than we started with. Fourteen of them joined us for this session. For some it was their first time trying to play as a band, for most it was their second. (One or two might have had a little more previous experience.) Anyone who's played music for any length of time will know there's a big difference between being a 'bedroom player' and a gigging musician. It's encouraging to see these young people rising to the challenge. Many off them are still in the very early days of getting to grips with their instrument. That they are prepared to use the little they'...

Last week we said we'd be starting running courses as a Novi Most team in Jajce. We can confirm we did and that our first week of courses turned out to be a heady cocktail of drums and guitar, with a dash of synth, a spot of violin, lashings of papier -mâché and two dozen chocolate muffins! This video gives a bit of insight into the preparation for the music courses and a nice long look at my new hat from various angles!

After being involved in youth work for more than fifteen years you've heard lots of reasons, and occasionally excuses, as to why people didn't show up when you were expecting them too. Today I heard one I'd never heard before. Rowan and I used to do a lot of youth work out of a school youth centre in a rural part of Sussex. Even there this never cropped up. Jajce is more rural still, as this picture indicates. It was produced by one of the young people who did make it to our first Novi Most session in Jajce. He was one of almost twenty who responded to the invitation and came to see what opportunities could open up with Novi Most now working in the town. It was a very positive couple of hours. We'll run a similar introduction session next weekend for those unable to be there today. Some of them were at a school event happening in town, which is familiar territory; others, however, had to go to a village and slaughter some pigs, which is definitely a new one for me! In ...

This was the view that greeted me on Thursday night. A mic, some mountains and an audience gathered for an evening of music. Under the wooden beams of this barn-like building the tea-lights flickering on the tables created a beautiful, mellow atmosphere shattered only by the crashing drums, pounding bass and screaming guitar of our punk rock three piece. Our set blended well known covers in equal numbers with original material. To my mind people jumped and cheered in all the right places, and for that I'm very grateful. I know singing English-language rock songs carries an element of risk in a situation where many in the audience know little of the language. In my defence, I'm still relatively new to the lead singing game and while I may yet learn to sing in another language I would be happier still to know I inspired someone here to step up the microphone. There's a huge satisfaction in helping others achieve their musical dreams: I saw it with plenty of young people in th...

'Mission Accomplished' is probably forever tainted by the George Bush connection, which, for the sake of fairness I should add, was probably not his fault. The huge banner, that is. Undeterred, let me declare today a mission accomplished moment. It was the end of a two month crash course in piano playing that saw my student (right in pic) achieve his goal of performing a famous local pop song with a fellow student singing at an end-of-term school performance. The show was a wonderful mix of different acts, from belly dancing to a Britney Spears cover. He had shown a real aptitude for guitar over the past couple of years at the course we run at Klub Novi Most but showing ability on guitar and being able to learn piano are two very different things. I'll admit I was slightly skeptical when he explained his plan. This morning persistence and dedication paid off as he put in a great performance in front of a packed room full of friends, staff and fellow students. He'd been ...

I love a good movie with a top musical moment: Free Bird in Elizabethtown, complete with its burning prop induced sprinkler downpour, would be a favourite example. Of course, a generation of kids are now being raised on Disney's take on the song and dance that is the high school experience. Naturally the premium peddler of fairytales presents an alternate reality where unrehearsed performances reach stunningly choreographed crescendos . In the real world that just doesn't happen. This morning I was in a local high school to take part in a rehearsal for an end of term variety performance. I'm teaching one student how to play Soba za tugu by Toše Proeski on the keyboard. At his request I'm accompanying him on guitar. Another student is singing, although by the end of the morning at least three other vocalists had had a go singing the song. While the performance was by no means a disaster it was a million miles from Disney slickness. That said so were most of the the t...

'Is this the set list?' I put down the cable I was coiling and glanced up at the table where the bar owner was pointing. I nodded. 'And you wrote all the songs?' I replied that, yes, apart for the obvious inclusion of some U2 and Lenny Kravitz, I'd written all the rest. (Truth be told, I co-wrote three of the track with musician-friends from previous bands, but I felt this was unnecessary detail at the time!) 'Good. Very good band.' My denim and leather clad critic pointed to the first track and then somewhere towards the bottom of the set list. “These song are the best. Very good.” We not the only band to receive such praise. “U2. Very good. Not heavy metal but very good band.” Iron Maiden are his favourite. U2 and Dire Straits make up his list of good non-heavy-metal bands. Then came the comparison. I've always had mixed feelings when people start down the 'that song sounds like...' route. As a song writer you know what's in your record ...

We're just home for a quick break - the chance to eat and check Facebook! - before our gig tonight. In a hour we'll be wandering back to Mostar's Stari Grad to make music or noise, depending on what your view on alternative punk rock is! I took this picture after our soundcheck. It's our backdrop to rock: the view over our little mixer, out of the window and up towards the mountains. It's by no means a great photo but in reality it's a great view. Not that it'll be n show tonight as it'll be dark at least an hour before we kick into our first song. This is Gilgal's third gig in this bar and we're experimenting with a third way of squeezing us and all our equipment into a tiny corner. Hopefully we've chosen well, although I'm aware I run the risk of getting a clip round the ear from a Musicman headstock if I step out of line!

As a songwriter I know something of what it takes to marry thoughts and melody, and then present the result to an audience. Every song is different. Some come easily, some are labours of love; some are easy to hold lightly, some are profoundly personal. When I got the chance to play with a Serbian folk songwriter last weekend I quickly realised this was no throw-away tune we were bashing out. I won't claim to have caught all the lyrics but it was enough to know the subject was a friend who had walked out of rehab and then died of an overdose. It was a song born of painful personal experience. We were playing at a conference that had gathered ex-addicts from across the Balkans. The flags hung in the meeting room announced the countries represented. It's not an array you'd often see displayed together, and some would say the delegates were not a group you'd often find together. You could put it down to their shared past experiences, the struggle of overcoming addicti...

We’ve rocked too hard tonight for me to write. The concert at Klub Novi Most was a success. There are details I should give, but they’re not going to get given now. But the evening achieved everything we set out to. Fortunately the weather was having a cool day as the better part of sixty people squeezed into Klub to see everyone perform. For people who know the music I’ve been involved in before you might be able to piece together something of what it sounded like from the set list – although several have been reinvented in a hard-rock style! - Everything You’ve Done - Nothing Without You - Here Alone - This Is Your Song - So Here I Am - Top Of The World

I’ve been helping people to learn guitar for the better part of ten years. If I had a pound for every time I’ve been asked to play that riff from Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana’s generation-defining greatest hit – then I’d be able to bail out investors fallen on hard times since Mr Madoff made off with their money! Like a Ponzi scheme, it’s not a song I view as big or clever; although, as with the best blags, you have to marvel that they’ve got away with it for so long and impressed so many sane people along the way. Tonight I was meeting with a student to play guitar. Over the past few months we’ve established that his taste lies in latin and jazz – not genres I'm particularly strong in. I like to pigeon-hole myself as a devotee of melodic pop-rock, partly because it’s so desperately uncool but also because that really is the music I enjoy. However, I don’t believe teaching should be used for musical indoctrination so I’m not going to teach what I like, rather help people to pl...