Abdou et le joueur de flûte. Abdou and the flute player. Musical tale by Latif and Elsa Chaarani

“In Morocco, in Rabat, Abdou works in a bank. In his spare time, he plays music, percussion, derbouka, bendir. One day, he meets a travelling musician, Hans, who plays the flute and travels from country to country. Hans moves in with Abdou for a while and they share the world of music. During the day, Hans plays in Chellah’s garden while Abdou goes to work. When Hans loses his flute, Abdou helps him to find another one just like it. But the day comes when Hans leaves Morocco. For Abdou nothing will ever be the same again: he realizes that his true vocation is to be a musician and resigns from the bank. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

This musical tale was conceived for children’s voices from 7 to 9 years old and was created as an end of year show at the Conservatory of Strasbourg on June 9th 2011.
It is likely to interest children above all for the charm of this story of friendship between two young people of different cultures. It is also certain that, for pedagogical reasons, the project has a number of advantages:
First of all, from a general point of view, setting up a musical project, and particularly this one which is situated between narration and musicality, allows the mobilization of the children’s energy, faculties and aptitudes, and incites them to discover the different aspects of a show (scenery, lighting, staging, costumes, sound system) and also the various functions occupied by the director, the singers, the narrators, the instrumentalists and the actors. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) In addition, the long-term preparation of a project develops the children’s motivation through the progressive construction of an objective to be reached, and ultimately brings them the pride of a quality achievement and the satisfaction of surpassing themselves by giving their best.
Secondly, this composition allows the development of different skills in young students. First, there is the memorization of melodies composed on an attractive text (the story that this composition tells is built like a tale for youth, and it evokes a young artist, Abdou, the protagonist, confronted with the choice of his future) and accompanied by an orchestra. Then the assembly of this show with varied melodies requires the precision and the accuracy of the song, as well as the fine listening of oneself and others, and finally the rhythmic precision and expression, since it has a particular rhythmic richness, being at the crossroads of various musical cultures.
Finally, in addition to learning modality and binary/ternary alternation, it allows the discovery of irregular measures and displaced accents. In addition, the overall theme of the show, which tells the story of the meeting between two musicians from different worlds (Europe/Morocco) and invites, not only to tolerance, but also to the discovery of a rich extra-European musical culture, in this case oriental, and suggests the idea of intercultural influences that can be exerted between artists from different backgrounds.