Robert-Goldwater-Library

30 Years of DanceAfrica

text and image via Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM):

BAM celebrates 30 Years of DanceAfrica with a kaleidoscope of dance, music, film, and art. New this year: a showcase of spoken word, dance and music inspired by the spirit of Africa and an archival retrospective. Join us Memorial Day weekend to honor America’s largest festival of African and African-American culture and another joyous milestone: the 70th birthday of Artistic Director Baba Chuck Davis.

Dance
Featuring Ndere Troupe of Uganda, Forces of Nature Dance Theatre Company, Kulu Mele African American Dance Ensemble, Bambara Drum and Dance Ensemble, Sabar Ak Ru Afriq Dance Theatre, and BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble.

Bazaar
The one-and-only open-air bazaar features African crafts, food, and fashion—and an exciting premiere: a live showcase of poets, dancers, and music inspired by the spirit of Africa.

Art
Exhibitions include The Colors of 30 Years of DanceAfrica by artist D. Lammie-Hanson, the African Ancestral Altar, the African Sculpture Garden, and an archival retrospective by BAMart and MoCADA in the 80 Hanson Place lobby.

Music
Gokh-Bi (Go-Bee) System merges political rhymes with the sounds of Senegal for hip-hop you haven’t heard before.

Education
Dance workshops for all and a community partnership with Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation.

Film
The best of the African Film Festival includes the acclaimed drama Bamako and the sequel to the animated classic Kirikou! [see earlier post]

South African Music Digital Archive

via Bring 'n Braai:

African music samples latest donation to the commons
Posted by Daniela on April 11th, 2007 filed in SA Free Culture Tour, Music

Another donation to the South African digital archive, being collected through Bring 'n Braai and the Free Music Project, is one which will be an incredible resource for children who will be using the One Laptop per Child computer. This donation is from ccMixter South Africa, and consists of the samples that were used for the SAfro-Brazil Remix competition.

Rebecca Kahn, ccMixter SA's resident blogger, explained more about the samples:

"The International Library of African Music (ILAM) at Rhodes University and Anthony Caplan both created samples using traditional instruments such as the mutumba drums and the umrhube mouth bow. The mutumba drums are originallly from Zimbabwe and are used to accompany spiritual ceremonies that include dancing, singing, clapping and playing the mbira thumb piano. The ILAM have used these drums in a sample which you can hear here.

The umrhube mouth bow is a Xhosa mouth-resonated friction bow, and has been used by Anthony Caplan by using whistling techniques of Xhosa origin, as well as tapping the string in the style of similar instruments found around southern Africa, rather than 'bowing' the string as the Xhosa people do. Check out Anthony’s sample, Umrhube Gees here.

The Kundi harp, which has been used in an ILAM sample that you can hear here, is a five-string harp from Central Africa. It is an instrument traditionally played by young men and boys."

As Rebecca said in her blog entry, it is often difficult to find information or audio clips of these instruments on the internet. And if one does find this type of material, it's usually marked with a big 'all rights reserved' sign. So to have these samples made available on the web, as well as under a CC licence, is truly an invaluable resource. Even more so, these samples will now not only be used to stimulate the talent of our South African remixers, but will also be made available to open the minds of children around the world to the sounds of Africa. And who knows when the next Miriam Makeba or Hugh Masekela will be inspired to start making beautiful music?

Black History Month @ MMA

Mask, 19th-20th century Senufo peoples; Côte d'Ivoire. Wood, horn, fiber, cotton, feather, metal, sacrificial material; H. of mask 14 1/8 in. (35.9 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Purchase, Nelson A. Rockefeller Gift, 1965 (1978.412.489).

Celebrate Black History Month Gallery Talks Saturday, January 27, 7:00 p.m. African Influences in Modern Art Denise Murrell Sunday, January 28, 1:00 p.m. Royal Arts of Africa Gayle Rodda Kurtz Thursday, February 1, 11:00 a.m. American Artists: Documenting History Hazel Rodriguez Thursday, February 15, 11:00 a.m. Medicine in the Metropolitan Museum—Egypt David T. Mininberg Saturday, February 17, 3:00 p.m. The Spirits of Animals in African Art Gayle Rodda Kurtz Sunday, February 18, 1:00 p.m. Royal Arts of Africa Gayle Rodda Kurtz Thursday, February 22, 11:00 a.m. American Artists: Documenting History Hazel Rodriguez Tuesday, February 27, 11:00 a.m. African Influences in Modern Art Denise Murrell The Art of Learning: Classes for Adults Friday, February 16, 3:00 p.m. Discussion of the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958) and gallery talk. Led by Alisa LaGamma, curator, Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Part of a series of monthly seminars in which an experienced art historian leads a small group of adults in the galleries and discusses how a selected book provides new ways of looking at and understanding great works of art. For complete details see our online listings of classes for adults. Ticket prices for these classes do not include handling fees. To purchase tickets by mail or telephone, please call 212-570-3949 or fax 212-650-2253, Monday-Friday, 9:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m. For more information, please contact [email protected] or call 212-396-5460. Films Saturday, February 17, 2:00 p.m. Uncommon Images: The Harlem of James Van Der Zee (1977), directed by Evelyn Barron (22 min.); Conversations with Roy DeCarava (1983), directed by Carroll Parrot Blue (28 min.). Saturday, February 17, 3:00 p.m. Against the Odds: The Artists of the Harlem Renaissance (1993), directed by Amber Edwards (57 min.).

Museum to host Festival de Arte Prehispánico

On August 5, 2006, El Primer Contacto con el Arte and the Muticultural Audience Development Intiative of the Metropolitan Museum will present El Festival de Arte Prehispánico. This program of family activities, inspired by the exhibition Treasures of the Maya Sacred Kings, includes lectures and gallery chats, music, film and theater on Maya culture. Bring the whole family!

To learn more, Download MayaPoster_lores.pdf [yes, a pdf file]


El 5 de agosto 2006 El Primer Contacto con el Arte y Desarrollo Iniciativo para Audencia Multicultural del Metropolitan Museum of Art presentarán El Festival de Arte Prehispánico. Esta programa de actividades para la familia, inspirada para la exposición Treasures of the Maya Sacred Kings, se incluye lecturas y charlas, música, película y una representación teatral sobre la cultura Maya. ¡Asista con su familia!

Para más información, Descargar MayaPoster_lores.pdf [sí, un archivo informático 'pdf']

The siren song of Mali

Toumani Diabate, who plays the 21-string kora, won the Grammy this year for best traditional world music album for “In the Heart of the Moon,” a collaboration with Ali Farka Touré. Mr. Diabate is a descendant of 53 generations of kora players from the Malinke tribe. (Ed Alcock for The New York Times)

From the New York Times:
By Josh Hammer

WE were walking down a dirt road in a neighborhood of Bamako with the mellifluous name of Badalabougou, following the rhythmic beating of a bongo drum. Then we saw it: down an alley lined with dusty neem trees and flowering jacarandas, a few hundred wedding celebrants had gathered under a canopy made from scraps of United Nations-issue sheeting, intently watching a local percussion band play a rousing music known as deedadee.

Lithe male dancers wearing leather headdresses, cowrie-studded orange vests, burlap shorts and iron bangles leapt and shook rice-filled calabashes known as yabbaras. A jembe fola ("he who talks with the drum") pounded on a bongo fashioned from sheets of horsehide stretched over a gasoline can. Another percussionist banged a grooved metal cylinder called a karinyan.

Then the dancers disappeared and a petite female singer moved in, circling through the crowd and singing praises to relatives of the bride and groom. Suddenly, she began gesticulating in our direction, while guests looked on, amused.

"She is singing about you," one told me. "She is praising you for visiting Mali."

<the rest of the article>

Konono No. 1: Congotronics

 

via NYTimes:
Congo Band Finds an International Voice in a Junkyard
By WILL HERMES
Published: November 15, 2005

When Mawangu Mingiedi, 72, a musician and truck driver from Kinshasa in Congo, built a sound system for his street band, Konono No. 1, years ago, he wasn't aiming for sonic innovation.

He played traditional music on the likembé, a "thumb piano" constructed of thin metal rods attached to a resonator box. When performing outdoors with his group of singers, percussionists and other likembé players, it was tough to compete with the street noise. So he fashioned instrument pickups using automobile alternator magnets and amplifiers using old car radios, and sent his music out over salvaged metal public-address speaker horns.

The sound, not surprisingly, was distorted. But it was an appealing distortion, giving his hypnotic music a raw, electric quality. And the conical loudspeakers, or "lance voix" (voice-throwers), proved more effective than anyone expected. "I thought that amplification would promote my group in the neighboring streets when playing in public," Mr. Mingiedi (who generally uses just his last name) said through a translator in a recent interview. "I never thought it would carry my sound all the way to Europe and the U.S.A."

Yet, in time, it did. The debut LP for the more than three-decade-old group, "Congotronics," was released last year on the Belgian label Crammed Discs, and its clattering rhythms became a small international sensation, thanks in part to a performance video clip that made the rounds on the Internet. Having performed in Europe this past summer, the group is now on a short tour of the United States. (It performs tomorrow at Joe's Pub in the East Village and on Thursday at S.O.B.'s in the South Village.) [read on...]

Les Nuits Toucouleurs

Les Nuits Toucouleurs
Ninth Annual Festival of Music from Mali and Africa
Oct. 14 - Nov. 6, 2005
Angers, France

The program of scheduled performers includes:

Nahawa Doumbia (Mali)
The ensemble Don Cherry's Gift (Benin / France) (photos)
Bayefall Gnawa (Senegal / Mali / France)
Ba Cissoko (Guinea)

 

Several exhibitions will take place in conjunction with the music festival, including "Choukrane" (Photographs by Sébastien Matégot and sculptures by Choun), "Bogo-Land" (Ludovic Conan), and photographs and crafts from the Touareg of Niger).

Contact the organizer for further information on the festival.

African Music Blog from Nigeria

reBlogged from BoingBoing:
Superb African music blog: naijajams.com (9/20/05)

Naijajams is a terrific musicblog maintained by a group of "like-minded Nigerians who share a common interest in Nigerian music."

It's not a commercial venture, just a labor of love -- and there's a lot to love. Great posts on contemporary afropop, juju, reggae, all things Fela, and vintage highlife, including this wonderful item about Ghanaian bandleader E.T. Mensah, known as the King of Highlife throughout English-speaking Africa some fifty years ago.

"If you were out dancing in Lagos or Accra in the 1950s and early 60s, highlife music is what the band was most likely playing," reads this post, "It was a music of the times – it reflected the optimism and hope individuals had in a the early days of self rule. You can hear this in the light-hearted themes and uplifting sounds."

When you listen to this MP3 of E.T. Mensah and his Tempos Band doing their midcentury hit, “All For You,” it's hard not to feel a little more upbeat than before you clicked.
Link (Thanks, DJ Carlito!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:01:46 AM      permalink