Who says you can’t make something out of nothing? Take two plastic and four metal paint buckets, a couple of water bottles, one pot, one plastic trash can, bicycle chain, some wire, a hinge, a mattress spring, some nuts, rods and duct tape and you just made yourself a fully functional drum set. Get some friends to make their own guitars, trumpets, and keyboards and now you have a band. Simple!
Maybe not a simple as it sounds, but proven to be doable by a Polish musical band called the Recycling Band. Consisting of Kamil Kędzierski (water bottle guitar, instrument creator), Marcin Nenko (water bottle bass guitar), Dominik Stankiewicz (“waste” drums), and Piotr Bolanowski (selfmade keyboard).
The idea of creating recycled instruments started in 2011 with a want to draw attention to a global environmental issue of waste and the importance of recycling as well as a need to make a bass guitar cheaply but effectively on a student budget. This band was able to accomplish both in a very short period of time by performing on street and stages around Europe and even advancing to the finals of the fifth edition of the Polish version of Got Talent.
The backgrounds of Recycling Band’s musicians are quite unique as Kamil Kędzierski is a metallurgy alumni from Krakow’s University of Science and Technology (AGH), Marcin Nenko and Dominik Stankiewicz are students at Krakow’s Music Academy, and Piotr Bolanowski is a musician/instrumentalist and an alumnus of Nowy Sącz’s National Music School.
They have performed using bass and acoustic guitars, ukuleles, drums, trumpets, violins and a keyboard made out of materials such as old wooden door, tables, water bottles, mattresses, combs, and paint cans and buckets. Maybe they will create some new special instrument for October’s TEDxKraków, you never know!