Currents News:

November 7, 2009: The Third Annual African Studies Workshop went very well this year. We had excellent attendance at the event and students and members of the public stated that they really enjoyed the quality of this year’s workshop. The long discussions about African issues that took place after the event showed the importance of the African Studies Workshop for Bryant University and Rhode Island communities generally. There is certainly an imperative to keep these types of programs going to foster more dialogue about African issues, particularly as the number of African living in Rhode Island climbs to over 60,000.

The public portion of the African Studies Workshop began with a roundtable discussion about human rights and mineral extraction in African countries. The roundtable was moderated by Winnie Lambrecht and included Nyekeh Forkpa (a former newspaper editor from Liberia), Graeme Rodgers (a social anthropologist), and Souleymane Kabwe (a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The four individuals engaged in a timely and useful debate about issues of mining and natural resource extraction in several African countries. Next year, we hope to have another roundtable that can last longer to allow each speaker more time to discuss relevant issues.

In addition to the roundtable, there was a wonderful performance and discussion by the Malian musician Balla Kouyate. He did a wonderful job demonstrating the techniques and styles of jali musicians from Mali, including opening the concert with the song “Jaliya.”

The Providence Public Library staff, particularly Lisa Millar, did a wonderful job in getting the stage to look professional with quality microphones, a rug, chairs, and plants. The African Alliance of Rhode Island (AARI) and Julius Kolawole were able to find very talented individuals to work with the Bryant University students in the morning session. We are always grateful to the AARI for their assistance in making this collaborative event possible. I also want to thank Brendon Rice who took pictures of the event. Finally, we had wonderful food catered for the event by Rose and Angela.
My thanks to everyone who helped out and participated in the event. Hopefully we will be able to continue this tradition in the years to come.

February 26, 2009: Mavis Staples performs at Bryant University to a sold-out audience at Janikies auditorium. The gospel and soul singer performed a series of freedom songs both from the 1960s and from her most recent studio album We'll Never Turn Back. The songs included "Eyes on the Prize," "99 and 1/2" and "Down in Mississippi." The last song, by the late J.B. Lenoir, included lyrics that Mavis composed about her grandparents. The songs were, of course, wonderful to hear. But it was Ms. Staples's interpretation of them that captivated the audience. From deep groans to exclamatory yells, she moved the crowd to hear things in the music and lyrics that most of us do not otherwise hear. In one song, "Waiting for My Child," which she sang with only a guitar to support her, she brought out the true sorrow of the lyrics by expressing the sorrow, longing, and waiting of the song. In the hands of most singers, the words would have been beautiful but not as captivating and moving. Nobody in the 400 person audience moved or made a noise. And, when she put the microphone to her hip and shouted a verse of the song, she fully brought the audience into herself and her interpretation of the song. (You can download a live version of this song here.) I was able to interview Ms. Staples before her show and ask her a few questions about her life and music. The interview will be posted on this website in a few days.

February 17, 2009: Group Saloum performed a concert at Bryant. The Senegalese band Group Saloum performed in Janikies Hall on Tuesday night to a full house of students, staff, and community members. The concert featured a selection of the band's songs, such as Chikh Ibra Fall, and inspired dancing by several of the band members. One of the most impressive parts of the concert was the drumming performed by Lamine Toure and Paa Seck Diery. The type of traditional drumming that they play from Senegal is call sabar and features an intricate interchange and dialogue of various sized percussion instruments. The drums, each with a different name, such as m'bung m'bung and talmba, each plays a role within the sabar rhythms being played. The largest drum was played by Toure and used rapid, aggressive rhythms that mixed with the playing of the other drummers. Perhaps the highlight of the night was that the band managed to get the audience dancing to the mbalax music, and even brought several members up on stage.

November 15, 2008:The 2nd Annual African Studies Workshop brought together nine Africans from the Rhode Island area with 37 Bryant University students. The students met in small groups with one of the guests to talk about cultural, historical, and political issues relevant to their areas of study in the African Studies course currently being taught at Bryant University. The interaction between the students and the African guests, which lasted three hours, was rewarding for all of those involved. In the afternoon, the students and African guests had a Tanzanian lunch cooked by two Tanzanian women, Rose and Angela, who also live in RI. In the afternoon, there was a performance by Moremi Cultural Group, a Nigerian musical group based in New England. To see some photographs of the event, click here. You can use the left and right arrow to move from one picture to another, or you can select a thumbnail at the bottom of the screen.

November 10, 2008: An exhibit of Tanzanian music and performance was installed at the Providence Public Library. The exhibit features 30 photographs taken between 1998-2008 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania during research that I conducted on the Tanzanian music economy. The photographs cover many different genres of music, such as dansi, taarab, rap (referred to as bongo flava), and traditional music. For instance, in the image to the right, These women are celebrating the music and culture of Tanga, a town and region to the north of Dar es Salaam. The women are dressed in cloth called kanga, which is a colorful printed fabric that the women wrap around themselves. The women here are performing a traditional song using a bull horn as a percussion instrument.

The Boston University Art Gallery Presents Exposures: Other Histories in Early Postcards from Africa. Exhibition Dates: November 21, 2008 - January 18, 2009. The Boston University Art Gallery (BUAG) continues its 2008-2009 season with the presentation of Exposures: Other Histories in Early Postcards from Africa. The exhibit presents early African postcards as a reflection of life on the continent between 1870 and the 1930s.The exhibition is a collaborative effort between Cynthia Becker, Assistant Professor of African Art at Boston University and Christraud M. Geary, Teel Curator of African and Oceanic Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It showcases selections from private collections and creates a poignant display of postcards produced from images by both African and foreign photographers during that era. Cynthia Becker says: “Instead of focusing on European stereotypes so prevalent in photography during colonialism, we wanted to show indigenous African self-portrayal and demonstrate how Africans took control of their own self-images.” BUAG is located at 855 Commonwealth Avenue, at the Stone Gallery inside the College of Fine Arts building on the Boston University campus (BU West T stop on the "B" Green Line). Gallery hours are Tuesday-Friday 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM, Saturday & Sunday 1:00 – 5:00 PM (closed Mondays and holidays). For more information, please visit www.bu.edu/art. EXHIBITION AND GALLERY EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

November 6, 2008: The directors Alan Dater and Lisa Merton showed their film "Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai" at Bryant University to an audience of nearly two hundred students, faculty, and staff. The film documents Maathai's life and struggle to plant trees in response to environmental degradation occurring in her country, Kenya. Fighting against the former Kenyan government, she was able to initiate the Green Belt Movement, which paid women four cents per tree that survives after planting. Over 30 million trees have been planted since the effort began in the late 1970s. In 2004, Mathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the first won by an African woman and the first to go to an environmentalist. To learn more about Maathai and the Green Belt Movement go to: http://www.greenbeltmovement.org. For more on the documentary film, go to: http://takingrootfilm.com.

September 25, 2008: Nigerian singer and storyteller AdesinaOmodunbi spoke to students in the "African Cultures" class at Bryant University about storytelling, Yoruba history, and praise singing. In his talk, he told the genesis tale of how the Yoruba came into existence and how they populated the earth. He also spoke about various religious and cultural traditions particular to the Yoruba people, and tried to give students a sense of what is like being Yoruba. Omodunbi focused particularly on trying to get students to see Yoruba cultural forms and ways of thinking as sophisticated cultural forms. For instance, Omodunbi talked about his attire (see image at right) and told students that it can be worn as business dress or casual dress. But, he especially encouraged students to see the dress as sophisticated and expressive forms. At the end of his talk, Omodunbi demonstrated praise singing and its importance in Yoruba royal courts.

September 22, 2008: Paul Gasek, Executive Producer of the Discovery Channel, spoke about his work on various shows including "Deadliest Catch," “Discovery Project Earth,” and “Engineering the Universe.” He focused on the idea of storytelling and how Discovery draws on real stories that occur rather than writes scripts that influence the show, as is the case with most reality television. Gasek also spoke about the problems that can arise with ornery charachters, large budgets, and hundreds of hours of footage to sort through with tight deadlines. Gasek showed numerous clips, including several from new shows that are going to be shown on the Discovery channel in the next few months. After the talk, Gasek toured the Bryant television studio and spoke with students about his work.

April 25, 2008: The Encyclopedia of Anthropology and Globalization was completed with over 120 entries. During the semester, both sections of the Anthropology of Globalization class at BU analyzed terms about globalization and culture. The encyclopedia, which is now available in a digital file and printed in hardcopy, will be used in future classes to explore key terms that connect anthropology and globalization. Every student had to select two words that they were interested in writing about. One term had to be written as a short entry (2-3 pages) and the other a long entry (4-5) pages. With seventy students writing papers, the collection features a wealth of material useful in undergraduate classes, as well as to those interested in exploring the connection between anthropology and globalization. Some of the terms featured in the encyclopedia include: biodiversity, brain drain, child labor, civil rights, class (social), climate change, commodification,
cosmopolitanism, cultural property, cultural relativism, culture, deterritorialization, debt relief, development, ecotourism, and ethnocentrism. View the encyclopedia.

April 17, 2008: Lou Donaldson performed at Bryant Univeristy on Thursday night with his quartet. The concert was well attended with a mixture of students, faculty, and staff from Bryant University, and members of the local community. Donaldson, who is 81 years old, began playing bebop in the 1950s and was heavily influenced by the sounds of Charlie Parker. He recorded several albums that drew on these early influences, but is most well-known for his soulful style and grooving rhythmic songs. At the Thursday night concert, he performed some of the songs from his early albums including "Blues Walk," which he recorded in 1958, "Alligator Boogaloo," one of Donaldson's biggest hits on the Billboard jazz charts, and the jazz standard "Foggy Day," which first appeared on his 1961 album Here 'Tis. He also played "What a Wonderful World," and several original vocal blues songs, such as "Whiskey Woman." Donaldson's tone was clear, warm, and very reminiscent of Parker, particularly in his phrasing on the bop songs. In his band were Eric Johnson on guitar, Akiko Tsuruga on Hammond B3, and on drums Fukushi Tainaka. All of the musicians played wonderful, but Tainaka may have stolen the show with his long and varied drum solos.

I was able to sit down with Donaldson to ask him some questions about his life in jazz and his thoughts on the way younger audience’s perceive his music. Listen to the interview with Lou Donaldson.

April 10, 2008: Students from the African Cultures class at Bryant University passed out copies of their collected writings to the Executive Board of the African Alliance of Rhode Island. The African Alliance worked closely with the students in the African Cultures class to help them develop ideas, content, and knowledge about their research papers on Africa. The collection featured a wide variety of topics that students wrote in the fall of 2007. Each of the students’ projects was geared toward improving their understanding and interpretation of the African continent. It is our hope that this collection of research materials will encourage others to engage with the continent in new ways, while also providing insight into the continent and its people. The Executive Board of the African Alliance enjoyed receiving the copies of the books and expressed interest in continuing the relationship between Bryant and the Alliance.

April 1, 2008 : Sociology and Anthropology book donations were provided to students at Open University of Tanzania in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The books were given by faculty of Bryant University and covered various topics including social science research methods, historical ideas in sociology and anthropology, criminal studies, and communications theory.The book donation is part of an effort to provide useful textbooks directly to students who can make use of them in their academic education. It is hoped that these donations can continue in the upcoming future and provide useful resources to the students who can most make use of them. The April 1, 2008 donation was supported by Karen Grissette of the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and James Nindi, a student at the Open University of Tanzaina. For more on this project, please click here.

February 28, 2008: Former President Bill Clinton visited Bryant's campus this afternoon to a packed audience of 2,600 students, faculty, and staff. There was also a spill-over crowd that watched the event on a large screen set up in another auditorium. President Clinton campaigned on Senator Hillary Clinton's behalf arguing that she would make the best candidate because of her foreign policy experience, service on military subcommittees, and direct connection to everyday citizens. He then went on to narrate several stories about the dedication and drive that Senator Clinton has in leading the country (including her work with at risk children in close-by New Bedford). Some of Clinton's comments were very well received, particularly his rebuke of the No Child Left Behind Act and the need to increase financial aid to college students without putting a tremendous financial burden on them after leaving college. Clinton also talked about the way Senator Clinton would promote a green working class meant to make the United States more environmentally friendly. He mentioned soding the roof of Bryant's sports complex to trap cool air in the summer and warm air in the winter.

February 13, 2008: Joshua Millard performed a solo guitar performance at Bryant on Thursday evening. The performance included pieces by Astor Piazzolla, Bach, Issac Albeniz, and Ian Krouse. Mr. Millard's playing was impressive as he established an appropriate mood for each of the pieces. A particular highlight was his performance of Bach's "Ciaccona," just as the snow started to fall outside. Mr. Millard also attended the Anthropology of Music Industries class at Bryant. The students are preparing to create a portfolio, tour schedule, and plan for how to promote Mr. Millard's music. Mr. Millard will be one of the judges at the competition among the student groups. For more on Mr. Millard and his music, please go to his website. For more on the Anthropology course, please click here. The Archway also published a review of the concert.

February 8, 2008: Mark Kates spoke at Bryant Univeristy about his experiences working at Geffen Records, Grand Royal Records, and Fenway Records. Some highlights of the event were hearing how he helped create the alternative music genre through signing bands, such as Sonic Youth, Nirvana, and Beck.


December 17, 2007: Students in the African Cultures class at Bryant University have completed their final research paper. Many of the students worked closely with members of the African community living in New England, and many projects provided valuable interpretations of the people, cultures, and ideas on the African continent. Here is a selection of two papers that you can read.

1. Gina Deeb, "South African Rock Art: Two Dimensional Drawings or Passageways to the Spiritual World?"

2. Rich Gasparian, "Drawing the Line: Cartoonists against Apartheid"

3. Stephanie Miller, "Social and Economic Implications of Ghanaian Funerals"

November 10, 2007: Recently, in the African Popular Culture class at Bryant University, we organized a workshop that brought in eleven people from Africa or who have worked in Africa for an extended period of time. Each of the experts on Africa met with between two to five students to discuss the students’ research projects and help the students gain better insight into a specific country on the continent. Of the eleven experts that attended, we had representatives from the following countries: Angola, Senegal/ Gambia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Arica, Namibia, and Botswana. The event was funded with an Aluka Award for Innovative Teaching.

To see photographs from the event, click here.