For my community project, I was requested to record some bass parts for a cover of a Bollywood song that would be danced along to by some of the dancers who took part in the Kahaani programme in school earlier this year, and would be put together by those part of the Kolkata GC in our school and then posted on the Voice for World NGO’s Facebook page, to help raise awareness and potentially fundraise following the destruction of their shelter in Bengal after a terrible cyclone hit.

The Voice for World NGO specialises in care for underprivileged, differently-abled children and adults in West Bengal, India, and has been doing so since 1992. Every year, one of the Global Concern groups in our school, the Kolkata GC, organises a dance and music show called Kahaani, where all ticket purchases directly go to fundraising for the Voice for World NGO. This year, I was glad to be a part of the show, as I played bass guitar for one of the singing performances in the show as well as took part in the finale dance.

For the first part of this project, it was mainly focused on us going through some team briefing through the form of regular contact on WhatsApp, as well as organising Google Meet calls where we could actually come together and discuss the sort of idea we wanted to have for the music and how it would sound, as well as the ways in which we would actually record our parts in time for the deadline that was being communicated to us by the NGO from India.

This was a really effective way to stay in touch with one another, with the COVID-19 pandemic rendering us unable to meet in person, so it was a good way to stay in touch with Shawronna who acted as the middle man between the House Band and the NGO, and communicated to us some specifics that we would have to adhere to as well the direction in which we should be working, herself also being a part of the Kolkata GC and an integral member of the Kahaani committee.

Following all the team briefing, the next part for me was to really start to learn the song and get prepared to record my parts, because Bollywood music is not something that I am really used to playing and listening to, which meant that I would need to learn how to play the piece requried for the video in order to record my parts, making up the next section of the process.

Below are some extracts from our WhatsApp group, just to provide an example of the way in which we stayed connected online during the COVID-19 pandemic and were able to receive updates from Shawronna regularly, which helped for time management.