About Us

PROfessional Music Performance and Technology “Music will be the salvation of my people” – Nelson Mandela

GOALS & OBJECTIVES

TO PREPARE predominantly talented youth who might not otherwise gain creative development, regardless of colour, class, creed, gender, economic background or academic record for a variety of careers in the global contemporary music industry.

TO HELP mould and develop new, identifiable, sounds, styles and songs that can, in turn, carve a modern, cultural and economic niche in the Global Music Industry. Drawing from the past, moulding with the creativity of the present to help spark the living culture of the future

TO CREATE role models, bridge into communities via 'live' performances, create communication and transformation across all boundaries.

WHO WE ARE...WHAT WE DO...

Comprehensive, two year, full-time contemporary music industry development focused on youth of talent who have quit school prematurely, without academic qualification or skills training.

Developed from trial programmes run in Cape Town, became the pilot for the South African National Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA). The body to create standards for music industry was also initiated for the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA).

Projecting creativity youth only perform songs they write themselves. This led to becoming first training in the world to be offered their own record label funded by Sony BMG.

Further programme improvement and development has affirmed the strength of generic music industry training as a means of reaching youth who have rejected formal academic education, removing the temptation to follow routes of social delinquency.

Although many of the modules have formal construction, delivery emphasises assessment at individual’s pace of learning for life and to work to achieve, rather than to pass examinations.

The ugly ducklings of academia may just be beautiful swans of creativity!

View Downloadable Executive Summary PDF

PROmpt trainees on test programmes 2003

LIFE SKILLS / OHS/ informal counselling

Life Skills play a vitally important role in training – not just as a subject but part of the approach throughout the day, week, and course. We are focused on turning out youth of value to themselves and society, to earn a sustainable living.

Many young people come from disturbed, confused, damaged and troubled backgrounds. Helping them deal with themselves, their situations and their past must take a priority in their training. Regular counselling both in-groups, and individually, is something in which capacity must be built.

more PROmpt trainees on test programmes 2002/3

CROSS-CULTURAL COLLABORATION

Opportunities for cross-cultural collaboration! With easily accessible and safe training premises – as exampled – evening and weekend informal musical integration sessions will be held. This will contribute towards fusing musical styles and ideas and to give the opportunity of learning to grow together, to create something of our time – exclusively from the South African community, to the world! South Africa has failed to penetrate global music markets because they copy world styles rather than create from their own rich past. This truly can produce the Rainbow’s pot of gold!

former Minister of Arts the late Glenn Adams visits PROmpt test programme 2002

Past pupils include

· a former street child walked 14k daily, getting back to look for food and sleep in a church

· an unmarried mother rose at 04.00, travelled 70k each way by train, returning at 19.00

· a just-released prisoner began to see a future away from crime;

· a boy with a tracheotomy who wrote a poignant song of life – “Only Human.”

· a trainee became an AIDS orphan when both parents died during training but went on to carve an on-going music career; in musicals and recording in South Africa and overseas.

· youth without academic qualifications are working in music industry from US to Europe, Hong Kong to Indonesia;

· a girl who won a SAMA trophy for her first CD.

· a Gugulethu girl had CD on EMI, finalist in National Anthem contest for FIFA World Cup

Alumni currently working in South Africa, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, US, Hong Kong, Dubai, China, Indonesia etc

Intake to include Youth of talent:

· Who have opted out of formal academic education

· Not in Education, Employment and Training (60% population under 25 years)

· Released from incarceration

· Single parents

· Desperately poor

· Cognitively and physically disabled

· Some more advantaged youth of potential if space allows – with needs tested fee structure. Music brings much-needed harmony across the cultural divide.

· Those from socially disturbed backgrounds including: Parental abuse; Rape victims; Abandonment

Contemporary Music Guru BRIAN ENO (song writer / producer U2, Coldplay, Paul Simon, Talking Heads and father of ambient music) explains:

“The problem really arises from thinking that Pop (Contemporary) Music is primarily a musical activity. It is not, and never has been

...would anyone care about it at all if it was just music? Pop has always been a melange of at least the following:

Melodies, Sounds, Language, Clothes, Fashion, Lifestyle, Attitudes to age, authority, relationships, the body and sex, dancing, visual imagery and the reassessment of value in all these things...

"when people get excited about 'music' and buy records, what they're actually buying is this whole big mixture...they're buying into a philosophy, a look, a set of feelings about cultural life.”

Programme: Full-time (Monday to Friday) – 08.30 to 16.00 – training in:

* Musical Instrument (Keyboard / Electric, acoustic, bass guitar / Drums / Percussion or, subject to arrangement, brass or other)

* Musical styles with emphasis drawing from indigenous to create something new

* Vocals (Contemporary – new, non-classic approach, developed by Medical Scientists)

* Ensemble

* Movement, appearance, presentation and communication (on and off stage)

* Song writing (core of the music industry – not composition – yet rarely taught)

* Music Business including:

Beginning in the Music Industry

Contracts: *Management *Agency *Recording * Music Publishing *Other including Merchandising, PR, Book

Careers in the Music Industry

How to put an Act / Group Together

Marketing

Radio and TV & Video

Communication / PR -

How to use Sound Technology / IT

Building your own home studio

Creating your own website

Marketing music – mainly on the web

* Stage Presentation and Movement

* Life Skills & Self confidence

* Occupational Health and Safety / Stress / Anxiety

* Information Technology and MIDI

* Links to industry; * Master classes; * Public performances * Recordings

N.B. Fundamentals in Maths and Language can be ‘bought in’ as add-ons.

♪ The focus of traditional music education is on reproducing music previously written in an accurate and academically correct form, with the ethos of ‘good, better, best’

♪ Contemporary music emulates from the originality of the song, sound, presentation and image...with an overall approach and effect of seeking ‘to be different.’

♪ Traditional formats concentrate essentially on the musical output, contemporary formats involve a multi-skilled, holistic approach.

is not the panacea for all ills – but has proven it can make a start by engaging with youth on their terms. We assume no prior music knowledge – but where it exists the module-based programme allows students to advance at their own rate.

is NOT just a music course - although it teaches instruments as part of a creative, generic programme to develop youth for work and society.

Only contemporary music can touch the mass and the individual at one; break down barriers while building awareness; improve work and social ethics with messages of hope and peace!- Rod Harrod, PROmpt Founder