Don Collinridge & Friends Play For Change in Australia

by Playing For Change Foundation

In the winter of 2012, Don Collinridge and his group of 10 musicians planned a road trip around the southern part of New South Wales…

30 Seconds of Your Time

by Whitney Kroenke

1,700 = $50,000 for music education!

We’re involved in a grant contest, and are just 1,700 votes behind the winning cause! We’re currently in the top 6, which has us in line for a $10,000 award, however if we can get to #1 it will mean $50,000 for our programs! The contest runs through the end of the month, and you may vote every day until then to support Playing For Change Foundation by clicking here: http://www.cultivatewines.com/cause/6178/

Gonje

by Sara-Maria Sorentino

The gonje (alternatively spelled gondze or goonje) is a mysterious instrument—strange and uncanny even to those among whom its playing is commonplace.  The sounds, the technique, and the crafting of the gonje all make for an intensely singular aural experience. Decorated with scarves and a specially designed brass ball for ornamentation, it is nearly inexplicable for an outside observer to discern how a mass of string tied to a resonator can produce such a range of sounds.  The gonje screeches and wails and hums better than the most accomplished avant-garde saxophonist.  What is probably an ancestor of the lute, the fiddle and the violin, the single-stringed gonje is found in different variations across West Africa.  Gonje musicians became members of the royal court of Dagbon (the ethno-linguistic territory for the Dagbamba people, in which Tamale is situated) in the 19th century during the rule of the Dagbamba paramount chief Naa Yakubu I, although the gonje, said to have come from a town called Yambi in what is now Burkina Faso, has been integral to Northern Ghana for many centuries.