On the 29th of August, our school’s ukulele group and recorder group participated in the Strum Strike Blow festival at Horncastle Arena.

Strum Strike Blow is an annual festival with over 1000 children playing ukuleles, marimbas, and recorders along with a backing band, and a few singers from different schools.  Our ukulele and recorder groups put a lot of hard work into learning the songs and performing them on the night.

Would you ever expect that they would start Strum Strike Blow off with a bicycle band?   Well they did!  First up, the bicycle band, performed on bikes while playing the following instruments: snare drum, bass drum, tuba, trumpet, trombone and cornet.  They performed two songs on their own, and then we joined in with ‘Oh When The Saints’ by Louis Daniel Armstrong and ‘Those Magnificent Men’ by Ron Goodwin.   Both songs were massed items so all of the instruments were played together.

After the bicycle band, we had a massed item called ‘Calypso Cruise’ by Wendy Jensen.  It was a really fun song to play along to.

Then the marimbas played four songs; Synthesis by Leah Munroe, Dabaduba Dah by Gerard Van de Geer, Limbo Rock by Billy Strange, and Don’t Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin.  The songs were very interesting for us to listen to because our school does not have marimbas so it had a different feel to it and the music was great.

It was then the recorder players' turn to show what they could do.  The recorder groups played two wonderful pieces of music and one cool, funny song.  They were: Rakes of Mellow by Michael R Nichols, C Side Rock by Sarah Watts and one of our favourites ‘Got the EBGBs’ by Sarah Watts.  The pieces of music were a pleasure to listen to.  The first piece of music, Rakes of Mallow, was an Irish Folk Dance.   C Side Rock had a jazzy, fun style to it.  Lastly, the song Got the EBGBs was catchy and fun.   All the children sang along to it (apart from the recorder players, of course). During some of the recorder songs, the ukulele players waved their ukuleles in the air, keeping in time with the recorders.

The second massed item we played was dragonfly by Gerard Van de Geer.  This one was played the first time through by the recorders, followed by the marimbas, and finally, the ukuleles joined in.   It was a bit different to play along to, but was still one of our favourites.

The ukuleles were up next to perform their songs; Little Black Box by Stan Walker, Aotearoa nō te Katoa by Lucy Summerfield - who was there herself to lead the singing (she won the Hook Line and Sing Along Competition, in 2018), Try Everything by Sia Furler, Tor Hermansen and Mikkel Eriksen, E Tu Kahikatea by Hirini Melbourne, and April Sun in Cuba by Paul Hewson and Marc Hunter which was very uplifting for everyone.  The crowd joined in with clapping.  There were heaps of ukuleles and all together we created an amazing sound.  The songs were joyful to listen to.

To conclude the concert, we performed, as a massed item, the James Bond Theme song by Monty Norman.  It was the perfect song to finish the night with.

Written by Skye, Matilda, Rosie, and Pene from W4.