Video shot and written by Daphne Yu, voice over by Kaitlyn Marsh
While Global Village has always been a tradition at RBHS, this year’s multicultural week diverged from the norm with an addition of a new day to celebrate. This year marks the first year RBHS has included “song and music” day into the week. After experiencing Global Village her sophomore and junior year, senior Morgan Widhalm, who attended Global Village planning meetings, founded the idea after reflecting on what she saw.
“I went to the first global village planning meeting and a question was brought up asking if we wanted to make any changes to the week’s activities,” Widhalm said. “I was thinking about the last two year[s] I had experienced and remembered the amazing fun that was last year’s Ireland booth. A bunch of my choir buds brought guitars, an upright bass, and their voices and sang traditional Irish songs. It was a blast. So I thought it might be cool to add a day during the week where anyone could come and perform international music.”
The committee, made up of RBHS students, went with Widhalm’s idea and added an additional theme to this year’s Global Village week. Allowing for the additional theme day this year is also the class schedule Columbia Public School has this year in regards to Global Village. This year, Global Village takes place during a five-day week.
“In the past years — like last year — [Global Village] was on a four-day week. [Now that it’s not], we just thought it’d be interesting to do things [RBHS] hasn’t done before,” junior Yasmeen El-Jayyousi, a member of the Global Village Committee, said. “We all thought [song and music day] would be a great idea. I remember the Irish Booth last year had some music going during Global Village on Friday, so we’d thought it’d be interesting to have it during lunch where everyone could see it, something that was more interactive.”

Last year’s Irish Global Village booth serenaded crowds while people took a tour around the main hallways and commons. Although recorded music played on iPods and other devices has always been present at Global Village Booths, senior Ian Meyer, part of the Irish booth last year, and his friends decided to do something they didn’t see often.
“Me and my friends who respect and enjoy Irish music decided that for Global Village, why don’t we all just get together and play some folk together? And it was just a good time,” Meyer said. “Now that we’ve kind of gone out on a limb and had some fun, I think more people [at Friday’s booth are] going to incorporate not only music, but hopefully live music, because there’s just something about live music that’s so energetic and so right-in-your-face that it just makes the cultural experience that much better.”
Meyer is extremely happy to see that RBHS’ multicultural week now incorporates a day just for music, and although he thinks the snow might have affected turnout, believes Friday will bring more music to the booths because it. While those running booths Friday have the choice of playing music among the the energetic crowd, El-Jayyousi, who plans on being involved with Global Village again next year, says the addition of the “song and music” day is here to stay.
“Music is one of those things that is very cross-cultural,” El-Jayyousi said. “It’s something a lot of people can relate to because it doesn’t necessarily have to involve language and stuff, and I think it’s very interesting to experience it from different cultures and see the similarities.”
By Daphne Yu
If you missed out on day one of Global Village, click here to see what happened.