The John Lennon Education Tour Bus

Next Destination: Diablo Valley College

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Lennon Bus brings Africans, S.F. teens to song

Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer

The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus rolled into San Francisco Monday to set up a live songwriting project - and in minutes it became clear that crafting tunes has changed quite a bit since the Beatle used to sit down and bang out the likes of “Ticket to Ride” with his mates.

Monday’s living lab paired the eight young, disabled musicians of Zimbabwe’s Liyana band with five gifted San Francisco School of the Arts students, and the last thing they did was actually play music together.

Instead, it went something like this:

First one of the local students, 18-year-old Adam Nash, recorded a bass line and looped it digitally so it repeated over and over. Classmate Savannah Harris, 14, beat out a 2-4 beat drum line and looped it, then Nash laid a few guitar notes on top of the bass and drums.

The combined track got played back, and within a few notes, Honest Mupatse of Zimbabwe had his hands tapping in fills on a pair of congas. A few chairs away, a group of Africans and Yanks started scribbling down lyrics.

It was only after the basics were cobbled together that any of them actually sang together - perfect-pitch layered harmonies, pretty much on first takes. By late afternoon, the 13 musicians had the basics of a full-fledged song.

It didn’t have a name yet. But the first verse and chorus pretty much told the story.

“We may live on different continents, we may live in different countries, we may speak different languages - but there’s something that makes us all the same,” the song began.

That something, said 17-year-old San Franciscan Kendal Owings, “is our musicality. Our humanity.”

And that commonality was the whole aim of the Lennon bus, a nonprofit mobile education program co-founded by the Beatle’s widow, Yoko Ono, to tour the country and bring state-of-the-art music-making skills to youths everywhere.

Judging by the smiles on the faces of the young folks involved, the message got through to pretty much everyone involved.

“Usually we just come together in our band and start jamming for ideas,” said Liyana member Farai Mabhande, 21, who uses a wheelchair because of congenital joint impairment. “But this bus, with all its equipment and what we can do here - it is amazing.”

Also amazing was the very fact that Mabhande and his bandmates were even here on that bus, which is parked at the giant Macworld Expo this week.

Liyana’s eight members are aged 17 to 24, and their disabilities range from spina bifida to joint-impairing arthrogryposis. That’s the one affecting Mabhande, as well as lead singer and songwriter Prudence Mabhena, 21, who can’t move anything but her head and a hand.

In Zimbabwe, disability is often viewed as a sign of witchcraft, and those who suffer it are usually shunned. Liyana’s members all met at the King George VI school for the disabled, and their music was their ticket up: Since forming as an Afro-fusion band in 2002 the group has won the Crossroads Africa music festival in Mozambique and toured Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands.

All anyone needs to do is to listen to Mabhena sing for one minute to understand why these severely disabled people have become so successful that they are now touring America for the next month.

Asked for a sample of her favorite song, Mabhena launched into “Ithemba,” or “Hope,” in her native language of Ndebele. The melody that came from her mouth was like aural honey. Bandmate Marvelous Mbulo, 24, laid a wistful harmony over the top as delicately as a feather, and for a few minutes, the air seemed to freeze with the beauty being sung.

“The words speak of how in my country you find people celebrating when a child is born right, but when a child is disabled the family is mourning and wants nothing to do with it,” Mabhena said. Her own experience, she said, looking off to the distance with a nearly unfathomable pain in her eyes, “was hard. I will let my songs tell the rest.”

For the San Francisco kids, spending time with a band that has risen so far from so little and so many miles away, was a thrill.

“We’re so very excited to meet this band,” said 17-year-old Natalie Cressman, who pitched in vocals and a double-tracked trombone line. “They are truly amazing, and now that we’ve met I want this song to be really good. It’s such a good message. It has to be good.”

The song the group produced will be incorporated into a video that will be aired tonight at Macworld to area dignitaries - and then posted on www.lennonbus.org, to show what can be done when different cultures come together musically. With a high-tech bus.

Next stops for Liyana: Lafayette, Oakland, Stanford University, Los Angeles and New York City.

E-mail Kevin Fagan at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

“This is precisely the kind of project John Lennon would have loved.”

- Yoko Ono Lennon

The Headlines

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Video aboard the Bus

The increasing accessibility of digital technology has led to an amazing expansion of opportunity in the art of digital storytelling. The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus has been at the forefront of this new media explosion, having produced daily video projects with students since January of 2001. The Lennon Bus puts state-of-the-art digital video equipment into the hands of workshop participants and teaches the entire digital workflow from storyboarding to web publication and DVD burning. Students leave the experience having shot, chopped, scored, and (most importantly) finished an entire digital video production. Using the latest cameras and professional hardware/software solutions including Avid Media Composer and Pro Tools, participants are exposed to the exciting world of digital videography and learn hot techniques of the trade. The accessibility of professional-quality technology is making it possible for millions of new voices to be heard and the John Lennon Bus is putting these tools into the hands of tomorrow's great digital producers. Subscribe to our Youtube channel so you never miss any of the amazing videos produced on the Lennon Bus.