The July training week through the eyes of Jana, our new communications trainee

Hi! My name is Jana, I’m the new communications trainee at Mitrovica Rock School. I’m also a drummer at for the band Algorithm and a huge fan of Pink Floyd. I’m here to tell you about the July training week. It was my first time in a mixed band, so I was very excited for the training and rehearsals throughout the week. At first, my band was called ‘band 3’, but we ended up calling ourselves Algorithm.

After meeting my band, it was like I already knew that we were going to perform at the end of the week. On Thursday our singer Rita couldn’t come to the rehearsal, so we could only finish the music from the song. That evening the whole band joined a group chat on Instagram and decided to ask if we could have just one more rehearsal on Friday morning, to finish the song lyrics and perform that night.

In the end we got our rehearsal. After a little more than an hour, our very first song was done. The excitement grew: we would get to play at the concert that night! It went great, and we were all even more hyped to get back together in Skopje to create more stuff. But that’s a story for another time.

One very interesting thing about the training week was that for two days, all stores, cafes or institutions were closed. It was very interesting seeing the contrast between the world outside of the rock school and when you went inside. The outside world was dead, all the streets were empty, but inside everything was alive, with everyone chatting and trying to create one more song for the show.

But Mitrovica wasn’t the only training week host in June and July. Bands from Roma Rock School and Music School Enterprise students were rehearsing together in Skopje while we were rehearsing in Mitrovica. At the end of the week a band from each school came to perform alongside Mitrovica Rock School bands in the concert, their first one in Mitrovica. It was a very cool meeting of our bigger community – a nice preview for the Summer School at the end of summer.