World champion looping/beatboxing artist Shlomo

Students at Fairfield had an amazing opportunity to attend a workshop on 17th May hosted in the Music Department by world champion looping/beatboxing artist Shlomo – this was a powerful music and performance based workshop exploring themes including gender/neurodiversity/body-positivity & mental health.

Shlomo talked openly to the group of 30 students representative of our diverse student population including our LGBTQI+ students about being bullied and how they had a difficult childhood being an Iranian refugee and queer. They wove an empowering story of how this galvanised and strengthened them, empowering them to go on and achieve world fame and live a life doing the thing they felt most passionate about – Music.

The students were engaged and amazed by Shlomo’s performance using a loop station, building drum and bass arrangements using only their voice for drums, synth and vocal lines. Mr Roderick joined the workshop and was blown away by Shlomo’s talent and candid honesty; humbled by how open and vulnerable they allowed themself to be – this was an empowering experience that the students were very fortunate to be able to attend and we thank Bristol Beacon for helping us to be able to offer this to our diverse student population.

Mr Roderick commented that “It’s great, we’ve had students who have completed Music GCSE and done very well who were beatboxers, it just goes to show how far we have come in music education that music GCSE is so inclusive as it wasn’t always like this”.