East London shoppers had the surprise of their lives when their local corner store in Dalston’s Kingsland High Street became a giant musical instrument for one day only.
The shop, Best Supermarket, was radically transformed overnight from a typical neighbourhood store selling everyday goods to an all-singing, all-dancing musical masterpiece by Red Stripe lager beer for their Make Music in the Corner Shop project which brought a little slice of Jamaica to the UK for one day only.
Products on the shelves and items left scattered around the store became the most unlikely of instruments, triggered into performance when a customer chose a Red Stripe from the shelves. The reactions of surprised patrons were captured in a ground-breaking video, as they set off the corner shop to the well known rock steady tune of “A Message to You Rudy” by Jamaican musician, Dandy Livingstone, later made famous by The Specials.
The instruments ranged from trumpets made out of glass bottles to a xylophone constructed from food cans, by way of jumping boxes and brooms and dustpans with lives of their own.
10 hidden cameras, 750 metres of cable and 12 metres of LED lights were used to create and record the experience as the smaller component parts combined to create on big musical experience, much to the amusement of customers who dropped in to pick up their daily essentials.
Thanks Alice from Taylor Herring for the update!