This is the Way We Roll

Home
resources
This is the Way We Roll

A Musical Blog about the making of The Cart

Listen to the Start of Cart

“Roll up! Roll up! Roll up!

You’re all invited

We’re so excited

So come away and play with The Cart

Ready…steady…it’s just about to start…”

‘The Cart’ is our latest touring project, celebrating 40 years of Oily Cart and of sensory theatre. The company started with the founders travelling around in an old van packed full of colourful props, puppets and instruments. They pitched up anywhere and everywhere, bringing stories to life with children from all different communities.

40 years on, ‘The Cart’ is travelling around the UK, pitching up in different specialist schools, packed full of sensory props, puppets and instruments so that teachers and pupils together can bring stories to life as the performers and audience! This is our way of celebrating sensory theatre, where it all began.

**It’s here!** **The Cart** **arriving at a specialist school**

Let’s Celebrate

Listen to Let’s Celebrate

Of course, you can’t have a show without music! Music has always been a huge part of Oily Cart shows.

A middle aged man stands in front of a shop window with buildings reflected in the glass. He wears a black/grey tweedy cap, a black leather jackets, grey/blue check scarf and a grey and black patterned shirt. He is wearing glasses with dark frames. — **Max Reinhardt, musical director of The Cart**

Max Reinhardt, co-founder of Oily Cart and musical director of ‘The Cart ’, has always championed boundless sonic explorations, collaborating with exceptional musicians from musical traditions across the globe.

You can listen to a few tunes from some of our other shows, co-composed by Max and the featured musicians, here:

Jamboree

Listen to Balkan Music featuring members of Don Kipper and The Destroyers

Hush a Bye

A kora musician sits on a green stool upon a cream coloured carpet decorated with light and dark green leaves. Two large decorate leaves frame his head. The musician balances the base of the kora between his knees above the floor. The kora is a large gourd with a long neck traversed by 21 strings. The man wears a light blue cordoroy jumpsuite, yellow socks and blackshoes. Around his kneck is a yellow and blue frilled collar with a matching cape attached. On his head he wears a yellow cap with three small fabric horns attached.

Listen to Mande music featuring kora virtuoso Kadialy Kouyate

Kubla Khan

A woman sits on the floor playing a sitar. She is dressed in a bright blue jump suit and a matching bell boy hat decorated with a gold circle; the toe nails of her bare feet are painted dark blue. Behind her right shoulder stands a large bronze gong; a wooden beater with a red furry head, hangs from the gong.

Listen to a sitar led Raag/ English folk fusion featuring Sheema Mukherjee

Even though we can’t yet have Oily Cart performers touring around the schools, we still wanted to make sure that pupils and staff could experience amazing live music that they could feel and hear and move to. So somewhere along the road, we decided that ‘The Cart’ itself should become a travelling musical instrument for staff and pupils to play together. Jamie Linwood, who makes instruments for schools, playgrounds, sensory gardens, parks and public spaces worked with Designer Amanda Mascarenhas to create The Cart. Jamie has worked with Oily Cart for many years, to make some of the most memorable musical creations in our shows. This has ranged from: instruments that move around on a tricycle in RING A DING DING to the floating marimba (or marine-ba) used in hydrotherapy pool show SPLISH SPLASH, and instruments made of pipes: plastic drain, sink and underground pipes for TUBE

A marimba (a percussion instrument consisting of a set of wooden bars) floats in a pond of dark water. The pond weed covers the surface of the water and green vegetation grows at its edges. — **Ring a Ding**

(All of these shows were written and directed by Tim Webb, designed by Claire de Loon, with music by Max Reinhardt)

Embaire Music

The design for the travelling musical Cart was inspired by Embaire music from Uganda. Embaire is music a whole community plays together on a huge wooden xylophone which is dug into the ground.

You can watch an Embaire being built, here.

The Embaire is the perfect instrument for our audiences, as it creates deep vibrations, music which feels just as good as it sounds. Many of our audience members relate to music primarily through touch.

A close-up of the back of The Cart. The Cart is painted in bright blue and red stripes with yellow trim and wheels. From the back of The Cart hang two long, dark oxidised metal bells. Alongside them hangs white laminated paper instructions for ways to use The Cart. — **You can feel *and* hear the sounds of The Cart**

A close-up picture showing six long wooden bars (embaire bars) fixed to the side of The Cart with shiny metal screws. The bars are painted in orange and white checks. The base of the cart is painted in blue and red stripes with a yellow trim. One of The Cart's wheels painted yellow with red spokes is visible. The Cart is parked on a blue floor. — **You can feel *and* hear the sounds of The Cart**

The Embaire was the ideal vehicle for us to create a show to celebrate music with our community of D/deaf and disabled children and specialist school staff across the country. Jamie fixed Embaire-like bars onto the Cart itself, which could be played by students and teachers. A resonance chamber was created within the cart, so that young people can sit inside and feel the vibrations, while their teachers, supporting adults and classmates play their live contributions over the soundtrack.

The soundtrack music, which also springs out of our miraculous musical cart, is the result of an online collaboration between four Embaire musicians in Nakibembe Village (in Busoga, Uganda) and Max and Mulele Matondo, a Congolese multi-instrumentalist (here in the UK). The Nyege Nyege Tapes Record label in Kampala Uganda sent their producer and sound recordist DonZilla Lion to record the musicians in Nakibembe Village, which has no mains electricity. The fact that there were no multi tracking facilities and that he only had a digital recorder to hand, didn’t stop him making some incredible recordings.

Here’s a video of the village which DonZilla shot on his phone.

Musicians in Nakibembe Village (Credit: DonZilla Lion)

Derek Debru from the label commented:

“ Nyege Nyege has been able to facilitate bringing the ancient traditional xylophone from Eastern Uganda to the UK, as well as promote the incredible musical heritage coming from Uganda, and specifically the Embaire. It is even more commendable that a lot of this project was worked on remotely due to covid restrictions, yet all the musicians involved, Amiisi Makaye, Kapado Faizo, Adaya Shalifu, Amuli Hassan, Donzilla from Uganda and the UK based artists Max and Mulele Matondo have been able to bring us closer together…”

And Donzilla Lion, who recorded the musicians in Nakibembe village, added:

“It was very challenging for Amiisi, Kapado, Adaya and Amuli at first because they were used to play as a group at the same time. They were happy that they were able to actually face the challenge. They loved the project so much as well and they said that we should bring more of these positive projects to them”.

Max then worked on the tracks sent from Uganda, selecting and digitally editing riffs and hooks, processing sounds with electronics, adding song and Carty Party melodies. Mulele truly filled the sound out, adding melodies and riffs on his Madimba , a Congolese xylophone. Max added real sound to fit the scenes of the story where appropriate and some sparkling storytelling by writer /narrator Amani Naphtali, who collaborated with us to write the story of ‘The Cart.’

The PRS Foundation’s The Open Fund were a crucial part of making this collaboration happen. We were delighted to receive their support to make it possible. Music is the most universal language. It has been an intrinsic part of Oily Cart’s work throughout the decades, with a particular focus on sonic vibrations and resonance, so it was a really natural and joyful fit.

What are

‘The Cart’ has rolled around to four schools across the country so far. The feedback has been great.

“The music was amazing and really helped with the atmosphere throughout the story.”
“[The children] loved joining in with the music (clapping).”
“It was a really nice experience and made me consider how I can use music in sensory stories going forward.”
Teacher, Humberston Park Special School, Grimsby:

“I’ve loved delivering the story of the Lost Feather to the children in my school. It’s so exciting seeing their reactions of joy, intrigue, request and rejection as they engage with The Cart, exploring the sensory props. Even the children who are most in their own world find something that connects and elicits response, almost always positive, but the negative is of course just as valid.“
Julian, Teacher, North wales

We are loving seeing photos of the sensory story inside The Cart being brought to life. We are particularly enjoying seeing the costumes and the smiles on staff and pupils dancing and moving round the school together in the parade at the end of The Cart’s visit. Now the pandemic is almost over, it’s time to celebrate together.

From us, to you, let’s all have a ‘Carty Party’ like it’s 2022!