DANC301-02 | Enrollment Open
Fridays 12-2pm
Topic: Amadou Kouyate & the Manding Tradition
In the Manding tradition of West Africa, there are those who are charged with the responsibility of being historian, counsel, lyric, and custodian of the sacred to their community. This is the legacy of the Djeliya, which has been carried intergenerationally for more than one hundred generations. Those of this lineage have heeded the calling, adapting in order to remain vigilant to the communities they serve. One such adaptation that has become synonymous with the Djeli are the music that they have created. The griots of West Africa have used music to inform and imbue the community with the knowledge of their past so that they may use it to awaken the potential in future generations. These Djeli have also served as liaison in bridging communities through music, dance, and other expressive arts in order to ensure that we are bonded in the strengths of our common humanity.
I, Amadou Kouyate, also carry this charge, incorporating the methods of dissemination of today to satisfy my responsibility to my community here in Maryland. If we can move forward in the spirit of the Djeliya, this experience of learning together will potentially facilitate indelible bonds that can become a part of a larger legacy of community action and involvement here at UMBC.
Through this collaborative effort between the Dance and Music Departments (combining drumming and dancing), it is my goal to facilitate an opportunity for student and community engagement through African diasporic culture. This engagement can happen in the form of a series of lecture-demonstrations or workshops and creating a work with the students that can be presented by UMBC. The process will incorporate points of entry oriented around broadening the gaze of African cultural framework. These points of entry help to provide a context to the function of practices within African communities that without the appropriate contextualization, are relegated to “art” or “entertainment” from peripheral perspectives. Once we have been able to appropriately understand the contextualization process based on the African cultural framework, we will begin to create work that is both functional and innovative for the community at UMBC.
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The significance of the relationship between rhythm and movement is at the root of many cultural expressions around the world. These phenomena exist in symbiosis with one another and are essential in articulating the human experience. The movement component of this course will be incorporative of West African Dance traditions of the Manding and neighboring ethnic groups. The project will require students to learn the dance component, as well as the corresponding musical arrangements, in tandem, to support their understanding of the relationship between music and movement.
MUSIC307-12 | Small Ensemble – Topic: Amadou Kouyate & the Manding Tradition