By Faith Gonsalves, Project Officer, Music Basti

I don’t believe in pivotal turning points in time, an “aha” moment – they are illusory. So many people have asked me this question – “What made you want to create this program?” or worse, “What was that moment that changed your life or suddenly gave you the idea?”

I never fancied myself a management oriented person (most of the time I still don’t!), but my experience working with Delhi based youth organization The YP Foundation during college- though challenging, really helped me understand what goes into creating and sustaining development work, particularly in an urban setting which is volunteer oriented. Though only with research, practice and experience have I really learnt what volunteer management, project management or program development are – I must say that The YP Foundation helped strengthen my confidence to begin Music Basti.

I started this program to create a fun space for interaction and learning. I have great respect for and belief in music as a medium of self-expression, and self-expression is something that is often extremely challenging for the children that Music Basti works with. The power to create something, own it and be proud of it is what is truly empowering. Music is an excellent medium and provides an excellent medium to promote every child’s right to self- expression, and to slowing realizing and claiming all their rights. Children’s voices are amongst the most subjugated, and it’s important to listen to what they have to say. This is a concept we promote through Music Basti.

In two years Music Basti has evolved to encompass many more ideas and projects, including the Music Modules project, song and music creation project, instruments learning project, collaboration with prominent artists and musicians, etc.

The Music Basti project is a part of the activities of Integrated Development Education Association (IDEA) and is sustaining itself through the voluntary contributions of artistes and volunteers, who work part time or full time to contribute their time, efforts and ideas round the week and year. It is supported by organizations and partnerships including The YP Foundation, Bridge Music Academy, Aman Biradari, Furtados Music India, EFICOR, and Gibson Foundation; it has collaborated with organizations including CRY, iCONGO and American Center, amongst others.

Despite the overwhelming support the ideals and programs of Music Basti has received,sustainability is problematic – because unlike in other cultures, music education is not part of the Indian education system, and music is still in a nascent stage of proving its value to the development of children, through improving their skills towards school and curriculum matters, but more importantly their creativity, motor skills, language skills, self esteem, and self expression – among providing a really great space to promote the value of cooperation, togetherness, and recognizing and appreciating diversity.

The project model is gearing itself towards being more financially viable through the Music Modules, Song Project and Instruments Learning (See last post, “My first blog ! What Music Basti is all about”) in order to ensure that children learn real skills they understand and can use, so that the unique process of teaching and evaluating can be replicated with different groups of children.

Music Basti works with a creative team of individuals, primarily students just out of college, trained musicians and performers and also enthusiastic volunteers who may not have a musical background. The team works to create the content of the program i.e. all the music; plan, develop and implement workshops; manage and create events and concert spaces for performance; communications and campaigning; and work on overall project management. The team at present works with key musicians who help develop content and conduct workshops and programs.

Personally speaking, there is always a crisis in identity that pushes the program to achieve quality driven and process oriented work. It’s a positive crisis though – I think constant re-evaluation of goals and methods is really important to Music Basti. Ensuring that the activities are as child- centric as possible, striving to create programs that move toward the goal of building self- mobilization among groups of children to creatively use their voices against injustices that are relevant to them, or to just have tools to be creative – these are the ideals that drive the team. Along with this, to reiterate the underlying theme of the project – participation and inclusion are values that are critical because they promote therecognition of the uniqueness of diversity, and not the acceptance of uniformity but that of universality.

Photos by: Shiv Ahuja

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