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Eugene Skeef's Rhythm For Life - moments in a life of music as a creative tool for change

405 views · Published 7 October 2011 · 4:39 · Indexed 3 October 2026

Channel: Eugene Skeef · 2011 · Music

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This is a slideshow of the presentation that is related to a talk I gave at the 4th World Forum on Music in Tallin, Estonia on 26 September 2011. The conference was organised by the International Music Council (IMC), the European Music Council and the Estonian Music Council. It is a speedily compiled sequence of pictures of cardinal moments in my work using music in social, educational and therapeutic contexts. The main character featured in the story is Oha Maslo, my first student and apprentice at the Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar, Bosnia after the war.

The soundtrack to the slideshow is significant in that it was born in a car not far from Sarajevo, when I was travelling with Oha and two other Bosnian apprentices, Atilla Aksoj and Danijel Lozancic. We were in search of Avdo Besic, an old traditional potter who lived deep in the hills of sheep country. My friends wanted me to teach Avdo the technique of making a perfect udu, the Nigerian Igbo women's ceremonial clay pot drum, which I used extensively during my music therapy sessions at the Pavarotti Music Centre (It is the instrument providing the bass beat on the soundtrack). We recorded the track, called Dzumbus (after the name of an ancient Turkish string instrument, which plays the theme on the track) in London, when my charity Umoya Creations brought Oha and Atilla on a cultural exchange visit.

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