The department of music is breaking into West African music by having a Ghanian dance event, culminating Friday with a performance.
The guest artist performing is Nani Agbeli, a well-known artist from Ghana. Agbeli will be performing with UCM students and faculty percussionists, dancers and singers 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 16, in Hart Recital Hall. Agbeli has been in Warrensburg since Tuesday to rehearse with the performers, teach UCM classes, lead a drumming and dance workshop with students at Warrensburg High School and perform.
Allison Robbins, assistant professor of music, said she is excited for this event because it brings new culture and musical diversity to campus.
“I think it’s really important that people experience music from other places and other cultures and a lot of times in the music department we do American music pretty well, we do European music pretty well, but we don’t have the expertise here to teach West African music,” Robbins said. “So this is a way to diversify the land of music we have on campus.”
Robbins said Agbeli not only performs, but he explains the dances to the audience. She said this way, the audience is informed on the culture and can get more out of the experience.
Robbins said Agbeli comes from the Ewe people of Ghana and said he is a director of West African music at CalArts School of Music in California, and travels to other universities to teach Ghana music style.
“I’ve actually been taking Skype lessons with Nani for the past couple of years, trying to learn some of the lead drumming and learn stuff that I can teach my students,” she said.
Ashely Miller, associate professor of dance, said it’s incredible to have Agbeli come to her classes and bring a different dance style to the students.
“It’s awesome. I was telling the students, ‘When will you ever experience this in your life?’ It’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn traditional authentic West African dance with someone from Ghana,” Miller said. “It kind of breaks them out of their bubble and gives them more of a worldly perspective of how the people in different parts of the world dance and what dance means to them.”
Alex Smith, assistant professor of percussion, has been to Ghana twice and studied similar types of music. He has been taking lessons with Robbins to learn from Agbeli to teach his students in percussion classes.
“Studying what we call world music is important to me. In particular, I love Ghana, I love being there. It’s a totally different experience that I’m sure memories will certainly come back as a result of Nani being here,” Smith said. “At the same time, I’ve never met Nani, so it kind of will be a new experience, too.”
Smith said his percussion students are excited and prepared to perform with Agbeli on Friday.
“I’d like to think we’re pretty prepared going into it, at the same time you never know what’s going to happen,” he said. “We’ve just kind of been telling them to be ready to change and be ready to do whatever’s requested of you by the guest artist.”
The performance is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Allison Robbins at [email protected].