News Snap

Yamaha Plans School Music Education in Bangladesh

Koichi Imai with Neo Mendes, from Omni Music. Courtesy: Omni Music

Koichi Imai from Yamaha Japan visited Dhaka last week and met ministry officials and heads of leading schools to orient them with their Yamaha "recorder" education programme. Mr Imai was very pleased and excited with the initial response he received from these schools and was very optimistic and had high expectations for "recorder" lessons to start in schools here.

Historically, responding to the Japanese government's call to provide "recorder" lessons to school students in the 1950's in their compulsory primary curriculum, Yamaha co-operated to teach children from Grade 3 (8 years of age) onwards with lessons on playing the "recorder" (a simple basic flute much like our bamboo flute). This programme has been a major success in teaching school children theory and practice of music through western staff notation. Through this “fun in learning” methodology, many "recorder" learners have progressed to take up other musical instruments and vocal music later in life. It is therefore not surprising that many philharmonic orchestras, classical and successful jazz, rock and contemporary musicians all over the world hail from Japan and countries where Yamaha imparts "recorder" lessons.

Following a procedure, Yamaha Japan sends their "recorder" instructor to interested countries at their own cost, where they train core instructors, who in turn teach instructors from respective interested schools. Mizumoto, a very experienced Yamaha instructor, looks forward to conduct his first training seminar in Bangladesh from the last week of September 2012. On completion of their training, instructors can start teaching children of Class 3 through their school platform. This programme is not for profit as the cost of a recorder is below five hundred takas. Interested schools are invited to contact Omni Music (www.enemomni.com) to register for this programme. Yamaha has been partners with Omni Music in Bangladesh for over a decade.