Hache, i, jota, ka,
ele, eme, ene, a,
que si tú no me quieres,
otro niño me querrá.
[‘H, I, J, K,
L, M, N, A
If you don’t love me
Another boy will.’
Spanish children’s song called El Patio de mi Casa]
Children’s songs serve as the common thread of memories, generations and lives separated in space and time. They are clearly meant to be fun, but they can also be educational. What do children’s folk songs teach us? What reality do they reflect? We are not trying to constrain creativity but instead aim to analyse what the lyrics of these songs from another era say, a time when girls were frightened away by spiders, men put their wives in a pumpkin shell, and ladies trotted but gentlemen galloped.[AS1]
We’ll mix elderly people’s memories and young people’s intuition to turn those perennial children’s songs into songs of our lives today by changing the lyrics, trying out new instruments and inventing a dance for any age. We’ll have fun with the entire family as we use music and play to help us reconsider those intergenerational tunes and make them more ours, more open, more contemporary, in a bid to give them many more years of life.
PROGRAMME
FEBRUARY
Saturday 17 February from 4:30—6:30 pm
Saturday 24 February from 11am—1 pm
MARCH
Saturday 9 March from 4:30—6:30 pm
Saturday 16 March from 11am—1 pm
NOTE: We recommend this activity for children aged 5 and older. However, any younger children in your group/family are more than welcome. We will try to adapt the pace to all participants.
In 2016, Atilio González and Elia Maqueda set up a group (Ruiseñora) and had a daughter, and these two events have largely determined their lives since then. They have published several records on the Raso Estudio label, a mix of electronic and traditional music, the project’s hallmark and one of the first in the new line of work to revive folklore by looking at the past in order to face the future. They have held family concerts with audiences and often hold concerts for their own family (they always compose, rehearse and record at home). They have also coordinated workshops and artistic projects in museums like the Reina Sofía and the Vostell Malpartida.
In this programme, we are inviting different artistic collectives who are families to imagine the shared space where they can pool their creative processes and interests and create together with other people, a space where age and skill don’t matter, a new space-time where you can share with your people, neighbours, chosen families, grandparents, grandchildren.
Entrance
Children's songs function as a connecting thread of memories, generations and lives separated in space and time. We will put the memory of the older people to play with the intuition of the younger ones, and so turn a nursery rhyme into a song of our lives today: altering the lyrics, trying out instruments and inventing a dance for any age.
