First Month of Classes at the Bizung School of Music & Dance

The Bizung School of Music and Dance opened on May 17, 2010. Over 150 students have registered for classes and school is officially in session! PFC Band member Mohammed Alidu and his brother Abdul “Abraman” Rahaman have put together a comprehensive program of drumming, dance, xylophone, gonje, and singing. It is the 1st school of its kind in the Northern Region of Ghana. Copy this link and paste to your browser window to view the most recent photos from the school: http://tinyurl.com/2cz7tua

A Better World in South Africa

by Ntonga Music School

The Playing For Change Band’s percussionist Mohammed Alidu, and the band’s tour manager Erika Duffee, paid a visit to the Ntonga Music School during their stay in Cape Town, South Africa, in December 2010.  Despite school being on hiatus for summer break, three dedicated students from the Ntonga student ensemble, Yonelisa Wambi, Prince Mafu and Enkosinati, came to Ntonga to meet Erika and Alidu.  Alidu shared his musical journey with the students. Originally from the remote village of Tamale, in Northern Ghana, he now tours the world with the Playing for Change Band, and is the program founder of a Playing For Change Music School, the Bizung School of Music and Dance in Tamale, Ghana.  His journey is a source of inspiration to Ntonga students. It is one of dedication, perseverance, and patience.  After sharing his story, Alidu invited Yonelisa to play guitar and soon joined him on his talking drum.  This musical interaction revealed the power music has to connect humanity. Kids from the surrounding community soon joined the musical moment, forming a circle around the musicians.  As Alidu and Erika reminded the students, music is a powerful tool: it has the power to communicate without words. Erika and Alidu’s visit encouraged and reminded Ntonga students that success in any career is a combination of talent and luck.

“A Better World” original song by Yonelisa Wambi, Ntonga Music School student. Featuring Mohammed Alidu of the Playing For Change Band on the talking drum.

(Thanks to Amelia Romano for documenting and taking video!)

Colorado Benefit Concert with Midnite and Mohammed Alidu & the Bizung Family Band

by Bizung School of Music & Dance

We are very pleased to announce that the PFC Band’s own master drummer, Mohammed Alidu, will join the St Croix roots-reggae band, Midnite, for a very special benefit concert in support of the Bizung School of Music and Dance, the only tuition-free school in Northern Ghana.

Traditional Music and Dance

The Bizung School of Music and Dance offers classes in traditional music, focusing on traditional instruments such as talking drum, djembé, palogo, gonge and xylophone. Classes are also given in dance, chant and keyboard. The kids also learn how to repair traditional instruments, they have rehearsals twice a week, and every month the give a performance for the parents and the people who live in the area.

Bakissu Alhassan

by Bizung School of Music & Dance

Bakissu is 12 years old and classes first began at the Bizung School she has demonstrated a very special talent to her teachers and the other students. Bakissu is studying the Gonje (traditional violin), xylophone, percussion and is already a good singer. She is a real leader and she traveled with other students from the Bizung School to perform in two festivals outside of Tamale and represent the school. Last February a full bus of kids from the school went to Accra and performed at the National Theater during the Kidafest. In September, 5 students from the school traveled to perform in the Volta region, representing the Northern region of Ghana during a national festival.

Bakissu Alhassan

by Bizung School of Music & Dance

Bakissu is 12 years old and classes first began at the Bizung School she has demonstrated a very special talent to her teachers and the other students. Bakissu is studying the Gonje (traditional violin), xylophone, percussion and is already a good singer. She is a real leader and she traveled with other students from the Bizung School to perform in two festivals outside of Tamale and represent the school. Last February a full bus of kids from the school went to Accra and performed at the National Theater during the Kidafest. In September, 5 students from the school traveled to perform in the Volta region, representing the Northern region of Ghana during a national festival.

A Week in Tamale

by Francois Viguie

September 11th, Accra airport, Ghana: My flight from Bamako, Mali, just landed in Acrra. I’m supposed to meet with Abdul Rahman, director of the school, who is coming to pick me up. I’ve never met him before but he’ll be wearing a Playing For Change t-shirt so I can recognize him. After a brief glimpse at the people waiting in the arrival area of the airport, I see Abdul Rahman.  He is smiling and says, “Welcome to Ghana,” during our very first hug.  We have to jump on a propeller airplane to reach Tamale, where the school is located.  The flight is going to be quick and safe.

Bizung Students Experience Diversity of Life and Culture In Ghana

by Sara Maria Sorentino

Last month, five students from the Bizung School of Music & Dance were selected to participate in the 12th week-long Basic Schools Festival of Arts and Culture.  Held this year in Ho, the capital of the Volta Region, the children accompanied some fifty other students from the Northern Region to compete in various categories: Poetry recitation, Drumming & Dance, English Drama, Choral Singing and traditional dress. For all the Bizung children, it was their first time in the Volta Region and a wonderful chance to experience the diversity of life in Ghana.  The hilly, lush Volta Region contrasts dramatically with the Northern Region’s aridity and flat landscape.

The Jera Dance

by Sara Maria Sorentino

Jera is a potent dance.  As with most dances in the North, the history of Jera is deep, obscure and mysterious.  Most sources trace the origin to one particular hunter called Nanja who, while in the bush, came across an ill omen: group of dwarfs.  Jera came to be performed as part of a religious rite when returning from hunting trips, and later after midnight at the funerals of elders and chiefs.  On these occasions, some believe the drums can sound without a drummer.  The embedded religious significance of Jera is now decontextualized, and it is performed at all times and on a variety of social events.

Guitar Workshop at the Bizung School

by Matt Wasowski

In all my years as a musician and teacher, I have never seen an entrance like that of the students at the Bizung School of Music and Dance.  While the rest of us prepared the performance space at the Youth Home and Cultural Center, setting up microphones and dialing the console, a driver had been sent to bring these young musicians across Tamale for their show.  About twenty minutes before the concert was set to begin, we began to hear the drums.  As the sound got closer, voices began appearing on the sonic landscape and soon, the students appeared about a hundred yards down the road.  They had been drumming and singing all the way from the school to the venue.  We could hear them coming from nearly half a mile away!

The Adowa Dance

by Sara Maria Sorentino

Surely one of the most stately, graceful, dances in West Africa, the Akan “Adowa” takes its name from the impressive animal, the antelope.  With its silent, swift movements, the antelope is evocative of the ideal warrior, and that is how this funeral dance is said to originate.  Feet move quickly; the waist with moderation.  But it is the hand gestures that figure at the center of this regal dance: the subtle flexing and rotating of the wrists, and the lightly closed fists spreading outwards into open palms, are highly symbolic forms of non-verbal communication.  The drumming too, on the large “atumpan”, is full of proverbs in Twi, the Ashanti language.  Interestingly, this drum (called Timpani in the Dagbani language) is said to have gained importance during a peace treaty between the Ashanti and the Dagbambas (the ethnic group of most of the Bizung students).

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.

Xylophone

by Sara-Maria Sorentino

The xylophones at Bizung are not indigenous to the tribes of the Northern Region.  We brought them here from Lawra in the Upper West region of Ghana, close to the borders of Burkina Faso and Cote D’Ivoire.  The big frames and the dangling gourds make for an imposing instrument, with a bright, sprightly sound unusual to the pace of life in Tamale.  Bizung teacher B. A. Kolaan learned xylophone formally during the 1970s and 1980s at Winneba University, and certainly has the pedagogic skills and patience to teach this challenging instrument.  Pentatonic, with three octaves, the children’s mallets have considerable distance to cover.  Besides the difficulty in getting the layout of the keys—from G to D (the notes are written in chalk for reminders)—there is the problem of timing.  The most basic principle of West African music may be “3 against 2”, also known as hemiola.  This sort of polyrhythm creates a tension-release mechanism, wherein beats converge and diverge, cyclically (and almost philosophically).  On the xylophone, hemiola can be executed with the left playing three while the right plays two beats or, for beginning learners, one pupil can play the two part, while the other child plays three beats over this recurrently.  A joy to listen to and a challenge to play, Kolaan uses simple choral patternings to introduce this fundamental concept.  In Dagari, the language of the people where the Ghanaian xylophone predominates, one such song used at Bizung is as follows:

Art Workshop at the Bizung School

by Francois Viguie

A few months ago, a Brazilian organization called “Bem te Vi”, who organizes art workshops for kids around the world, got in touch with the PFCF in order to give a workshop in one of our music schools. After being in places such as Angola, England, the amazonian forest and Spain, Bem te Vi was set to come to the Bizung school of music and dance in Tamale, Ghana, to challenge our kids on their artistic creativity during a week.

Bizung Students Perform Live Throughout Ghana

by Sara-Maria Sorentino

Bizung children are bringing their talents to their communities. Having performed at several events around Ghana, and been broadcast on live television, word on the Bizung school got out.  Like traditional lunsi drummers and gonje fiddlers, they started getting invitations to provide the entertainment for nearby weddings and naming ceremonies.  Music forms a customary, indispensible part of all Dagbamba gatherings.

The Language of the Dagomba

by Sara-Maria Sorentino

Teachers and students at Bizung know a myriad of different native languages such as Twi, Ewe, Gonja, Hausa, Kusasi, Bimoba and Buli, but the majority of the students at Bizung speak Dagbani, the language of the Dagomba people in Ghana’s Northern Region.  It is in this subtly commanding tongue—the idiom of their families, community and ancestors—that the children best express their hopes and dreams, and that their musicality emerges.