Always : Gilbert Mathews (Jazz drummer !
On Saturday, 4 August 2018 21:14:18 UTC+2, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:
Two serious omissions; still on the genesis of the Stockholm scene, two good friends : the late Malando Gassama ( Gambia ) and Poe Jatta (Gambia) - still a good friend
And as good friends go, always: jazz drummer Gilbert Mathews
On Saturday, 4 August 2018 20:32:35 UTC+2, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:A brief aside. Popular gossip about popular culture and not at all meant to be either highfalutin or "academic" or irrelevant
Preceding the dawning of this very interesting age of African Dance and Drumming in Sweden, was the earlier epoch of spiritual malaise ,when Hindu and Buddhist meditation swept through the West in the 1960s -1990s (a popular culture phenomenon partly generated by the Beatles and their connection with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ; Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (also known as Baba Ram Das) Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels) and his Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics , not to mention Alan Watts and maybe above all Allen Ginsberg and the rest of the Beats ,and, and Tibet's apostle to the West : Trungpa Rinpoche
Whilst all these various jazz and jazz fusions were going on, the psychedelic music (and drugs), the Grateful Dead, the Doors etc. et et , not forgetting ( never forgetting) the reincarnation and evolution of the blues through Jimi Hendrix
There's this synopsis of the whole event : Theodore Roszak's TheMaking of a Counter Culture:Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition
During that age of materialism, a resounding echo of the Hindu spiritual ethic as heard from the gurus : " Give me your money and I'll give you peace of mind!
Some perspective : Swedish Jazz has been around for a long time
Specifically, the rise of African drumming and dancing in Sweden has to do with the arrival and cultural presence of Africans in Sweden ( a long story) perhaps starting with the arrival of some radical Ghanaians here, preaching, Kwame Nkrumah.
Some of those on the Stockholm drum scene that kick started the whole thing and that I knew personally : Sabu Martinez and the Afro Temple – one of the earliest and greatest - Rebop Kwaku Baah ( Ghana) Hassan Bah ( Guinea Conakry) Marcos Monserrat ( Venezuela) Ahmadu Jah ( Sierra Leone) Soul Brother Melyvn Price ( USA) and it has been a local African presence backed by other events such as reverberations from Dag Hammarskjöld and the still on-going Congo crisis , what was Apartheid South Africa, Swedish missionaries in Ethiopia, Sweden's connection with Tanzania ( one of Sweden's favourite countries during the Olof Palme years) - Malcolm X - in 1964, the Rev Dr. Martin Luther King being awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace , not to mention Muhammad Ali's rumble in the jungle with George Foreman ( in Kinshasa in 1974, The emergence of Soul Brother Number One : James Brown, Alex Haley's Roots" , Bob Marley and the Wailers, Fela Kuti..
I took a salsa course in ´New York a long time ago but have never been to a dance class in Sweden ( real Africans don't , they go to the gym , if need be and to the dance parlour to move their feet shoulders and hips and to pick up women ) What I notice is that it's mostly ladies who go to these "dance classes" - they want to learn to dance like African women etc. etc. and hopefully meet a nice African guy or two at the course , never mind the mumbo jumbo about consciousness and " to improve relationship with family and friends,.."
There is of course SACRED DANCE
Cassandra Wilson : Solomon Sang
On Friday, 3 August 2018 21:45:54 UTC+2, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:Edited :
Gossip: Even as a humble connoisseur of modern African Music, I am not that hip to making classical distinctions that no doubt may and do exist between the works of musicologists that are born , partly or wholly home-bred in Africa and those from other parts of the planet who nonetheless have done and are doing seminal work on African music, from its notation to the sociology and anthropology of African music , and that includes all Jazz also known as "the Great African Music", even if one is inclined to "not privilege Western works over African ones "
What is most memorable about Professor Kwabena Nketia who was the Director of the Institute of African Studies which included dance and drumming and performing arts sections (whilst my Better Half and I were students there, 1970-71) was that he loved his subject so much that he used to smile, while lecturing on African music. He would for instance fondle and lovingly stroke the Gonje he was demonstrably holding in his hand in front of his rapt listeners. ( I have only seen the same kind of love evinced from Mr. Jones, the proprietor of what was once an institution known as Jones Antikvariat, in Stockholm, Sweden. On receiving an antiquated first edition of an out out of print classic , I have seen him lovingly stroke and caress the valuable book cover, and smile loving too when it came to discussing the price....)
No denying that the Oyinbo have done a lot of good work on WORLD MUSIC . Of course, we are not just content with celebrating the likes of Susanne Wenger and her husband Ulli Beier who later on turned his attention to the "last area of darkness" , namely Papua New Guinea, but, still in the area of contemporary West African Music, Professor John Collins, one of Professor Nketia's successors as director of the Institute, has contributed immensely as researcher, performer, recorder and promoter of Contemporary African Music - as indeed has my other friend from a long time ago, John Miller Chernoff ( once a good friend of Fela) he has written about him, but for pure listening pleasure , the most unsurpassed is his collection of recordings of Dagbon Drumming and Akan Drumming
Much can also be said of Francis Bebey
What I have noticed in Europe (Sweden in particular) is that since Jane Fonda started her Workout Exercises for Women and in the intervening years, Aerobics, there has been a n explosion of what's now known as African Dance Courses – in Sweden, promoting traditional African Dance , accompanied by the Djembe beat , as spiritual and physical therapy - and one of the first people to start that in this country, was the late Bedu Annan with his "Grounding " and then there are all the various types of Gymping courses. ( I once went to an African Dance course being taught by a Swedish lady, who said that she had studied dance in Guinea Conakry – after fifteen minutes of flaying my hands in the air, my arms got tired – as a real African I am more hip oriented....)
Peter Michael Hamel : Music ( The healing power )
Also interesting :
How music affects the brain ( and emotions
How music affects the brain ( Ted Talks
How listening to music affects the brain
What Happens to the brain when one plays a musical instrument
"Forget your troubles and dance!
Forget your sorrows and dance!
Forget your sickness and dance!
Forget your weakness and dance! "
( Bob Marley and The Wailers - Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)
On Friday, 3 August 2018 20:46:15 UTC+2, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:Gossip: Even as a humble connoisseur of modern African Music, I am not that hip to making classical distinctions that no doubt may and do exist between the works of musicologists that are born , partly or wholly home-bred in Africa and those from other parts of the planet who nonetheless have done and are doing seminal work on African music, from its notation to the sociology and anthropology of African music , and that includes all jazz also known as the great African Music, even if one is inclined to "not privilege Western works over African ones "
What is most memorable about Professor Kwabena Nketia who was the Director of the Institute of African Studies which including dance and drumming and performing arts sections (whilst my Better Half and I were students there, 1970-7) was that he loved his subject so much that he used to smile, while lecturing on African music. He would for instance fondle and lovingly stroke the Gonje he was demonstrably holding in his hand in front of his rapt listeners. ( I have only seen the same kind of love evinced from Mr. Jones, the proprietor of what was once an institution knowns as Jones Antikvariat, in Stockholm, Sweden. On receiving an antiquated first edition of an out out of print classic , I have seen him lovingly stroke and careless the valuable book cover, and smile loving too when it came to discussing the price....)
No denying that the Oyinbo have done a lot of good work on WORLD MUSIC . Of course, we are not just content with celebrating the likes of Susanne Wenger and her husband Ulli Beier who later on turned his attention to the "last area of darkness" , namely Papua New Guinea, but, still in the area of contemporary West African Music, Professor John Collins, one of Professor Nketia's successors as director of the Institute, has contributed immensely as researcher, performer , recorder and promoter of Contemporary African Music - as indeed has my other friend from a long time ago, John Miller Chernoff ( once a good friend of Fela) has written about him, but for pure listening pleasure , the most unsurpassed is his collection of recordings of Dagbon Drumming and Akan Drumming
What I have noticed in Europe, (Sweden in particular) is that since Jane Fonda started her Workout Exercises for Women and in the intervening years, Aerobics, there has been a n explosion of what's now known as African Dance course – in Sweden, promoting traditional African Dance , accompanied by the Djembe beat , as spiritual and physical therapy - and one of the first people to start that in this country, was the late Bedu Annan with his " Grounding " and then there are all the various types of Gymping courses ( I once went to an African Dance course being taught by a Swedish lady, who said that she had studied dance in Guinea Conakry – after fifteen minutes of flaying my hands in the air, my arms got tired – as a real African I am more hip oriented....)
Peter Michael Hamel : Music ( The healing power )
Also interesting : What Happens When the Brain Plays a Musical Instrument ...
listening to music lights up the whole brain -- ScienceDaily
On Thursday, 2 August 2018 23:03:55 UTC+2, Kwabena Parry wrote:I would recommend that in our works we give adequate epistemological sites to African voices. The tome of works of Emeritus Professor JH Kwabena Nketia is central to African classical music and dance. I am not discounting Shusterman's works but let us not privilege Western works over African ones. Just a thought.Kwabena Akurang-Parry
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ebrima Kamara <kabaka...@gmail.com>
Sent: August 1, 2018 1:25 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - African drumming and dancing--Abstract -
African drumming and dancing (ADD) improves self-consciousness, reflexivity and heightens attentiveness.
Dance and rhythm are composed of multiple steps in time and space. Learning each beat/dance step
separately focuses attention on specific body parts like the arms, neck, feet and spinal column.
This increases self-consciousness and by extension improves the quality of life.
The meta-theory of the study is Richard Shusterman's somaeastics -
understanding of the body as formable and a place of "sensory aesthetic appreciation".
Body, mind and culture constitute the basis of both conscious/unconscious, actions/reactions.
Therefore, to maximize human potential requires increased consciousness of body and feeling.
The basic empirical material is interviews with practitioners of ADD in Sweden.
The study found ADD-exercises engage physically, mentally and emotionally.
Experiences like the feeling of strong commitment or responsiveness cultivated through these drills are
transferable to other areas of daily life such as to improve relationship with family and friends,
coworkers and other social contexts.
Keywords: Self-consciousness, body, soul, culture, drums, dance, experience, mindfulness
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