BAMA Bocas del Toro

BAMA live from Bastimentos 😁 We have been practicing the song Hakuna Matata for weeks! Learning the 5 chords, the strumming pattern, adding flavor to it.
This is our current version which I am so happy and proud about. Practice pays off ❤️🥹✨
Enjoy the video with authentic reactions from the camera man and magnificient frigatebirds in the background ✨

As always supported by our hosts 🙏🏽❤️

Merry Bocas Christmas from the BAMA crew here at our weekly Ukulele class
These past weeks we practiced Christmas songs of course. The kids can now play Feliz Navidad and Campanas de Belén.

“Now I can play the G chord”, Yocelin said, noticing her own progress. I love being part of it 🥹🙏🏽

What are you willing to share this Christmas? ☺️

Greetings from our frequent BAMA students who have been coming to our free Ukulele class week after week. Thanks to support from the community and donations from all over the world we’ve been able to keep this weekly music class for the local island kids from Bocas del Toro, Panama. Music for everybody!! 🎶💕🏝️

Would you like to support us as well?
-> Get a BAMA t-shirt .gourmet 😎

Contact Marianna for a peak into class
+50769933309

BAMA is back with classes on Bastimentos 😍😍
Past Sunday we had our first ukulele class of the season with 9 students. I was so excited that I forgot to take a new photo 😅 The image above is from last year.

What is amazing: 1.The place is still the same: the restaurant has been so supportive in the past years, providing space for a bunch of island kids to play the ukulele every week. The view and breeze is still as great and the food as well ☺️
2. The kids on the photo are still almost the same ones showing up again a year later to keep learning and making music together 🥹❤️🙏🏽

Classes are mainly intended for the local kids starting from the age of 8 years but anybody is welcome to join and visit. Maybe you? 😁🎶🌴

Music for everybody!!

Public - “I liked going onto the stage, playing fast and seeing the look on the faces of the people watching us”
Words from Mayribeth, one of our new ukulele students from Bahia Honda. She, her sister and brother were amongst a unique delegation of 9 BAMA ukulele students who had a presentation at the Music Festival at Skully’s on Monday January 20th 2025. Some of them were our first students of this project. Others like Mayribeth and her sibling have started with classes in November 2024.

With groups from Old Bank, Bahia Honda and Carenero, it was the first time for these kids to play together in this formation and the first time to have nine kids play the ukulele at the same time for a presentation. And even on a stage!

After hearing Mayribeths feedback from the event, I have the impression that our goal to have the kids experience a meaningful day, was achieved.
Hereby, I would like to take the chance and thank the people involved in gifting the kids this experience:

❤️ to Zuly who volunteered to accompany the kids from Old Bank (and so much more magic you do to make kids show up)
❤️ Mosi, who made chocolate muffins to raise funds
❤️ German, the manager of who agreed on receiving us and supporting us with the cost of transport, beverages and food
❤️ Yahirs Dad who brought the group from Old Bank to Isla Colon
❤️ Restaurant Chili House .h0use for the delicious french fries for the kids
❤️ Jeremy from for coordinating the participation of the kids from Bahia Honda
❤️ Bernardino, for taking his time to join us and his kids to the event
❤️ The parents of the kids who trusted us with them for this adventure
❤️ Eli and Daniel who helped keeping the kids happy, hydrated and for holding our cheat sheet
❤️ Nour for her encouraging words and prompt handover of the cash we used to pay the bus
❤️ Julio from Transporte Beitia for being our reliable, flexible bus driver for a safe and punctual pick-up from 3 different locations
❤️ Fellow musicians helping out
❤️ All of the encouraging friends and spectators smiling and cheering at the young musicians

BAMA would like to give a shout out to Bob Tiedeman and The Foundation at Red Frog for their years of support of our communities in Bocas Del Toro and their recent donations to our music program. The Foundation at Red Frog has been supporting our communities and working to protect our environment and make sustainable improvements in public education and health throughout the province of Bocas Del Toro for over 10 years now. Check out their website to see just how much the Foundation has done for us over the years. Thank you!

https://www.thefoundationatredfrog.org/

BAMA continues to support free music and percussion classes weekly on all three Islands. Because of support from the Foundation at Red Frog and many others, we have been able to provide quality instruments and support teachers consistently for the past 3 years. Contact us for more information.

Heartwarming 🥹💗
Every class we start with a song to greet each other.
“Hola Jocelin, hola Jocelin. Cómo estás, cómo estás?” I find it important to have every single one feel seen. Oh and how I enjoy being greeted this way. When it is my turn and the kids sing “Hola Marianna, hola Marianna. Cómo estás, cómo estás?” I answer: “I’m happy to be here with you”.
What would a ukulele class be without a ukulele teacher?
What would a ukulele teacher be without students?
I thank us all for showing up and spending these precious moments together once again! Ashton, Yahir and Jocelin, who haven been coming regularly in the past weeks. Kalui and Mosi, two of our first BAMA students came back for a visit too 💗 So did .shumway who was present during our first group lessons on Bastimentos almost 3 years ago. Joan, who played the ukulele for the first time.

Thank you to all of our supporters from near and far. Feel the joy with us!!

Together we keep providing music for everybody 🎶❤️

Photo credit: 😘

Love. Today, December 8, is the Panamanian Mothers Day. The perfect moment to take out my music box I bought a while ago on a flee market in Switzerland. I was sure, my ukulele students would be fascinated by it. Today was the perfect opportunity to take it out. It plays the melody of a lullaby my mom used to sing with me when I was a child. I enjoyed so much singing with her before going to bed. My heart fills with love and gratitude sharing this story with the kids I‘ve spent hours and hours playing ukulele with as a teacher of BAMA. Music and time creates such a strong bond.
Feliz día de la madre 💗🎶

Belonging
Ultimo Refugio, July 16, 2022. It was the first time for the ukulele students from the islands Bastimentos and Carenero to meet and play together. How do you bring island kids from several islands to the same place? Is the effort worth it? One of the biggest lessons I‘ve learnt with BAMA is, that the effect of an effort is often not visible at the moment. The hard things such as organizing, coordinating, showing up, even if you have a thousand reasons not to, feel real and pretty convincing.

Now, 2.5 years later. This past Sunday, December 1, 2024, I find myself still teaching the ukulele in the weekly classes. I start with the same introduction song and finish with „La Bamba“. Sounds familiar? If you‘ve ever visited class, you remember. I have not changed those two rituals. But this past Sunday, there was something more I observed: In both classes, on Bastimentos and Carenero, the more experienced students got to teach the new ones. Two of them; Charly and Asthon, took part during the memorable presentation at Ultimo Refugio two years ago!! After all this time, they still come back to the ukulele class. But things have changed. Not only that they are taller. They teach and assist others with a patience, compassion and self-confidence. „Maribel and Jose are doing great“, Ashton reports to me. „May I teach them something more difficult?“, he asks.

„Maybe it‘s time to give BAMA a break“, I‘ve thought to myself so many times. The classes are open, few kids show up regularly, sometimes nobody comes.

„It feels like we‘ve never been gone“, Jess says. She is Charlys mom. This Sunday, we were 19 people, kids and adults, most of them have come several times throughout the years. I start the class with the introduction song and end with „La Bamba“. The same songs since we’ve started classes on Basti more than two years ago. Boring? The side effect: Familiar. It creates warm memories. You can come back months and even years later and feel connected again. Yes, there might be new students, new friends to play with. The consistency creates belonging. Here we belong together, here you are at home ❤️🏝️🎶

Room to grow
An astounding 15 people we counted in yesterdays class at Alvins restaurant. 10 people from Bahía Honda coming with the Tierra de encanto’s “Ukulele express” with captain Jeremy and first mate Adley. 2 kids from Old Bank who are refreshing their Ukulele skill they have attained in several classes in the past, Mr.Bocas Chess joining the class to practice and share presence and 1 visitor you has come to class a year ago and gifted us with a private concert in the end.

We kept practicing the chords C and F with a simple down strum (first video). Check out the video with one of the students’ own strumming pattern! I wish I could say I thought him that 😂 I was left in awe to see what a kid can express when you just provide the room (and instrument in this case).
Room to grow. Let’s keep growing together ❤️🎶🏝️