A new school will teach high school students rock music as part of a course on offer this summer.The Music Institute of Bermuda allows students to receive accreditation in non-traditional music on completion of an intensive, eight-week course.Musician and music teacher Bim Bademosi and his siblings Aderonke and Oluremi are behind the venture.“We all know about some of the issues that Bermuda is plagued with today in terms of youth disengagement,” said Oluremi. “There are various outreach programmes and community activists; there are a lot of folks trying to find ways to channel the energy that a lot of young kids have. This is another avenue and opportunity for young people to channel their energy.”The school will be one of the first in Bermuda and the Caribbean to offer accreditation in rock music. It also offers courses and exams for students interested in non-classical instruments such as the electric guitar. The courses are offered through Rockschool, an institution in Middlesex, England that has had its examination process approved by the British Examination Board.“For classical music we have noticed there are a lot of resources, but historically there have been none for pop or rock music and instruments such as bass guitar or drums or electric guitar,” said Oluremi, who worked as a DJ with his brother Bim when he was younger.Bim said the concept for The Music Institute of Bermuda was born 13 years ago. While a student in London, England, he volunteered with a community centre in the city.“I noticed there was a lot of interest from the young men in music,” he said. “I decided to take my personal equipment and set up a music centre in a vacant room they had. My goal was to try and turn some of these young guys’ antisocial behaviour into something positive.”He set strict rules in his studio. If a young person was going to make music they had to be there on time and there was no profanity. They also had to behave properly in the community. After a month he began to notice a change in the young musicians.“In the beginning the kids would come in and talk about how they would go around snatching people’s change for fun,” he said. “A month later they were saying ‘I can’t do that because I wouldn’t be able to come to this music class’.”He continued: “We are going to set up a fully fledged accredited music institute which we hope will be a bridge between high school and university. What we have noticed is that when children are in high school they have everything. They have all the musical toys that they need at school. They practise and they are engaged with their peers who also love music. When they leave high school there is a complete void. They just go off into the abyss [if they don’t immediately go off to college].“The idea behind the union between The Music Institute and Rockschool is to prepare what we call music practitioners for the practical music industry in popular music genres such as reggae and hip hop. The thing we will be sinking our teeth into most will be a music practitioner course. This will be for people who are interested in four different areas of the music industry: music technology, composition, music performance and music business. We feel that these four platforms are the areas that you really need to understand if you want to become a music practitioner.”This training would help high school students get work in the industry and give them a platform for further study, Bim said.He cautioned that the intention was not to teach people how to become better musicians, but to teach them practical music industry skills.Oluremi said the programme would appeal to people who wanted to work as DJs or install sound systems and also people who wanted to better understand how to utilise their home studio.“We might take this outside Bermuda or invite folks in the Caribbean to Bermuda to participate,” he said. “There is an international avenue and opportunity for us to garner some tourists.”Tuition is $125 a week. The Bademosis are hoping to get sponsorship from local companies and organisations for interested students who can’t afford to pay.For more information e-mail Bim Bademosi, thefeelofmusic@gmail.com.