Latest News

Belmont's Celtic Connections

With "A Curriculum for Excellence" being the hot words in education at the moment we were excited when the music and language department decided to work together on a cross-curricular initiative involving music, language and dance with Transitus. The two departments worked hand in hand, teaching Spanish phrases to enhance pupil's knowledge and understanding of the language and culture, while pupils also studied and performed Salsa and World music.

The school were delighted that Transitus were able to consolidate this work with a surprise visit from Texan band ‘Del Castillo' for a morning of superb music and fun. The band have been credited with creating a new musical genre, "Nuevo Americano" a blend of rock, blues, flamenco, Latin and World music styles and were in the middle of their UK tour.

The band also performed for a range of pupils from nursery to S6 and had the whole audience participating in rhythm and dance in some songs. S2 pupil Katie Agnew said "I loved that they sung in Spanish and English and it was fun to learn about the instruments. The music made you want to sway and dance and the band were really friendly and wanted to spend time chatting to us. We will never forget this event."Gavin Wilson in S5 also thought it was a great experience in the lead up to the exam period when life can feel stressful.

Craig MacMillan from the higher Spanish class was delighted to ‘habla a español con la banda'.

The school choir who recently won the Braehead Xscape choir challenge, performed ‘Del Castillo's' song ‘Anybody wanna' for the band arriving and they added some of our own Scottish flavour to the song by adding a Celtic fiddle part. The band loved this tribute and it can be found on their website.

The band were outstanding and in today's fast moving, often selfish society it speaks volumes that they freely gave their time to come along to work with children, after which they were chauffeured off to the BBC recording studios to record a Transatlantic session.

27 Jan, 2010

Filter by category