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Jacqui Dawber explains how Hallé Educations Balle Balle Hallé project offered a unique opportunity for primary school pupils from Bolton to investigate the musical cultures of Pakistan and England.
The 2006 England v Pakistan test series provided a unique opportunity for a music education collaboration between Lancashire County Cricket Club and the Hallé. Supported by the Foundation for Sport and the Arts, the Balle Balle Hallé project was developed with St. Marys CE Primary School, Bolton, during the summer term in 2006. The project began with a series of singing, instrumental and percussion workshops involving the Hallé and Pakistani musicians, followed by a one-day summer school at Bolton Music Centre. The sessions gave pupils the opportunity to work with the musicians on a fusion of traditional Pakistani folk songs with well-known sound-bites from the Western Classical tradition, including Shostakovich and Mozart in honour of their respective anniversaries.

Each workshop consisted of two sessions. During the first session all musicians and pupils worked together, whilst for the second session the class was split into two groups. The first group was made up of the many pupils who played instruments ranging from violins to bagpipes! These pupils worked with the Hallé musicians and were given the task of creating composed sections based on Mozart and Shostakovich themes to fuse and interweave with the Pakistani musical material. The second group worked with the Pakistani musicians, including dhol and tabla drummers, in a singing workshop where they learnt the music and original Urdu text of the traditional Qawwali song Allah Huu!
The culmination of the project was a final performance on the first day of the 2nd test at Old Trafford. The area for the final performance was situated right at the front of the ground by the main entrance, and the presentation took place during the lunch break. The group attracted a huge crowd of both English and Pakistani supporters, intrigued and excited by the peculiar blend of sounds echoing around the ground. As the musicians and pupils started to play, many of the Pakistani supporters joined in, singing and dancing to the music around the performance space.

Through the project, pupils enjoyed a diverse range of experiences: they listened to live performances from both classically trained and Pakistani musicians and learned about instruments from both traditions; they participated in composing, singing and performing tasks with some magnificent results; compositional and musical elements of both traditions were identified and manipulated by both musicians and pupils to create a piece which fused music from Western Classical and Pakistani repertoire; and they had the opportunity to play at the unique venue of Old Trafford Cricket Ground at a high profile sporting event to a large, diverse and extremely enthusiastic audience.
Such was the success of the project that Hallé Education is currently working in partnership with Lancashire County Cricket Club on plans for another music and cricket project, which will take place during the summer of 2008 and will be linked to the test series against New Zealand.

Jacqui Dawber is Education Manager for Hallé.
e: jacqui.dawber@halle.co.uk;
w: http://www.halle.co.uk