Multicultural Instruments for School Assembly

WorldMusicalInstruments.com provides school assembly presentations to elementary schools in the Chicago area. We customize these school assemblies to fit with the school theme, like Multicultural Week, or Fine Arts Week, or Music in the Schools Week. WorldMusicalInstruments.com offers instruments from around the world, so the emphasis of our grade school assembly programs is showcasing a wide variety of instruments that represent many world cultures, as well as featuring music from around the world.

We're often asked about the instruments that we bring to these school assemblies.

Here is a general guideline of what types of instruments to include in school assemblies:
- durable musical instruments
- safe musical instruments
- lightweight musical instruments
- fun musical instruments

Durable musical instruments - We avoid ceramic doumbeks, because they easily crack if the edge is banged on the floor. Since we work with elementary school children, when they have hands-on experience with the drums and move from instrument to instrument, accidents do happen. With some items made from gourds like the shakere, a not-so-gentle dropping can cause a crack in the gourd.

Safe musical instruments - Safety is always important in the classroom, especially with the younger school children. Crowd control is also an issue during a drumming circle experience. We usually avoid putting "sticks" in the hands of the children. A lot of our drums are hand drums, which is best for the young elementary school crowd. Beaters can accidentally poke an unsuspecting classmate. Beaters can also be used on drums that are intended for hand drumming, which can damage drum heads. For items like the gong which require a beater, we like to have a teacher or assembly presenter manage the gong, passing the beater from child to child as they take turns banging the gong. Be sure to clean all instruments after each assembly presenation if the students have hands-on use of the instruments.

Lightweight musical instruments - We bring some heavy items to school assembly presentations, but keep them in contol of an adult or keep them on the ground. The gong is one that an adult must control. The djun-djun drum is kept on the floor and played by hand, unless the assembly presenter uses it to lead a drum circle. Fiberglass doumbeks are great for elementary school drumming circles because they are so lightweight but have big sound.

Fun musical instruments - When deciding what instruments to include in a school assembly presentation, include fun items like a bulb horn (brings in wind family of instruments without the saliva issues!). The gong is big fun, of course. The bull roarer makes an interesting sound, but needs a lot of room and can only be used by the assembly presenter.

The big question is - what instruments do you bring to a school assembly presentation? We're constantly adding to the collection, but here is a list of the main instruments (some of which are pictured):

ashiko drum djun-djun doumbeks (fiberglass and aluminum) tabla set kids conga drum damroo monkey drum stir drum rain stick shakere kalimba bulb horn gong gungaroos ankle bells egg shakers bongos tambourines maracas

Do you conduct school assembly presentations using musical instruments? Let us know what instruments you include!