Saskatoon high school students keep creativity active with COVID-19 music video

Students at Marion Graham Collegiate in Saskatoon are finding ways to release their creative spirit despite the drawbacks of COVID restrictions.

Musicians and singers at the high school put together a COVID cover of the K-os tune Crabbuckit and made a video to go along with it.

The band spaced out across the gym with face masks and socks on their instruments. The singers and rapperrecorded themselves at home.

It was all put together by Graham alumniHarrison King.

Grade 12 singer Quinn Smith said it took some time to get the harmonies right, since they were all working from their own homes except for one physically-distanced meeting in the band room.

Smith said they used a version of the song by The Good Lovelies to get the harmonies right.

"It's basically just an arrangement of the song done by three women," Smith told Saskatoon Morning's Leisha Grebinski. "We weren't given any music, so we had to use our ears to figure out which girl we were going to kind of follow and then who we were going to kind of copy their harmonies."

Grade 12 student Keinan Kendall, who contributed the rap section of the song, said he had to huddle under the blankets in his room while recording to get rid of an echo.

"I just sort of wanted to put my own spin on things," said Kendall, whose lyrics have fun with his views on the band while staying upbeat.

"I wanted to put some cracks in there about our own band, my experience."

Smith said she was really happy with the final product.

"It was so cool," she said. "It was done being edited literally, I think, within 24 hours. So it was a really quick turnaround. And I watched the final product probably five times."

Kendall said it was great to be able to put something together as a group and flex their musical chops.

"A lot of people have definitely been missing out on that musical aspect of their lives a lot, especially since school started," Kendall said. "It's been so long since we've been able to do something together and being able to see the whole group sort of come together and make something like this is really amazing."

Smith echoed those sentiments.

"There's not a lot of opportunities to sing. So for me, this was a huge, awesome project to work on it. It actually reminded us of how great singing was and it was just a great project to work on."

The video has been submitted to the CBC Canadian Music Class Challenge.

You can find it on CBC Saskatchewan's Facebook page or at CBC.ca/saskatoon.