What happens when you take “titanic” Belfast accents, add a little Houston heat, sprinkle in some Port of Spain calypso beat and top it off with Wilkes Barre plain talkin’? You Feel Good of course!
For several months we’ve been trading ideas and tunes with our community music partners at the Moon Base Project in Northern Ireland. John and Seonaid Murray were in the same music program at University of Limerick and have been collaborating ever since; John has worked with Seonaid’s groups in Belfast and Seonaid was over on this side a few years ago sitting in with the RRHS for Adults folks.
Our latest collaboration, Here’s Me, is a memory music project that has participants from Somerville Senior Citizens Housing exchanging spoken word memories and hand percussion with Seonaid’s group of adults of various ages and backgrounds who add sung vocals and instrumentation. Recordings are made using GarageBand and digitally shared back and forth; Belfast’s Half Bap Studios has donated professional mixing services. So far we have finished two songs, both of which take a well known song and then rework it to make it something completely new and original.
Here’s a taste of “I Feel Good” …
Our friends in Belfast. Seonaid’s on the sax!