Project Gateway: Uniting Cultures Through Music

In a world containing an abundance of cultural differences, it is important to remember the things that connect us. In the opinion of music professor Mary Ellen Haupert, the cultural gap is bridged through music. Since the beginning of the school year, Dr. Haupert’s music theory classes have been engaged in a project called “Project Gateway”. The project tasked students with creating an original composition of music based on the poems of seventh-graders from the Gateway Christian Schools in South Africa.

Poem topics met a wide range, spanning from poems about the seasons to poems about eating pizza. The music theory students could pick any poem they preferred out of this wide array. After having the entire Fall semester to compose the works, the first two weeks of the Spring semester revolved around finalizing the music and rehearsing it for performance. On Friday, January 25, the compositions were all performed in the music majors’ weekly music forum.

One composer was Mitchell Shaw, a freshman Vocal Performance major. His piece, titled “I Went To The Fridge,” was originally written by Esihle Zondi and focused on late nights of taking inventory of all the food left in the fridge. Shaw shared, “it just transported me to when I was young and bored on a Saturday with nothing to do, and just counting what’s inside,” and he stated, “It reminded me of simple times.”

The project encouraged Shaw to compose for the first time in his life. Through a lot of trial and error, he was finally able to establish a melody for his tune. “The poem is funny to me, and it has a goofy, child-like feel to it,” Shaw shared. “I wanted the music to be up-beat and goofy and adorable all at once.”

The process was not easy, with Shaw saying it was very “intimidating” at first, but in the end he was impressed by the work that he made. He sees it as a collaborative effort between him and the young poet, even though they have never met. Shaw claimed, “It won’t be on the billboard music hits, but it’s something I created with someone I don’t even know. Somehow, we made it together, and that’s special to me.”

Another music student, Katrina Walt, had the pleasure of watching all the compositions come to life during music forum. The number of pieces surpassed twenty, with many even doing the same poem. Yet, Walt spoke to the originality that each piece kept throughout the performances.

“It was particularly interesting when two students could look at the same text and hear two completely different melodies and rhythms,” she shared. One young composer could take a poem about the spring and make it into a soft choral arrangement, while another could make it a pop-style solo.

The substance of the poem often did not necessarily dictate the kind of piece that came out of it. Walt spoke of a composition written by Joseph Lange, a Vocal Performance major, titled “The Duck”. The song, while playful in appearance, was crafted into a very modern-styled piece, which Walt said was very “stylistically unexpected.”

Walt also spoke to the credit of the mastermind behind the whole operation, Mary Ellen Haupert, who not only got the project going, but also helped students perfect their compositions, rehearse them, and even accompany them on the piano. Walt said, “I don’t think it would’ve been possible to have these pieces completed and performance-ready in such a short amount of time without her encouragement and suggestions.”

Dr. Haupert made sure to record all the performances of the pieces so that the original poets in South Africa would be able to see how the college students transformed their poems into fully-fledged pieces of music. Even without knowing each other, the composers felt a bond with the poets after spending so much time with their words. At the end of the day, both parties were working together to create something they could both be proud of. The piece is something that will always bind them, regardless of the distance and cultural differences, showing that sometimes music speaks when nothing else can.