Celebrating the Music of Ghana

Ghanaian percussionist Nii Otoo Annan and ethnomusicologist Steven Feld in residency on campus

Monday, October 12, 2009

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The music of Ghana comes to Duke this week. The campus will host a screening of a documentary film directed by Steven Feld, a public talk with Feld and a musical performance by master Ghanaian percussionist Nii Otoo Annan.

Also known as the “Elvin Jones of West Africa,” Annan uses a variety of musical instruments including xylophones, bells, guitar, lutes, bass, numerous drums, as well as instruments of his own invention. In his music, he experiments with unique sounds including those of the “APK” (African Percussion Kit), which consists of numerous Ghanaian drums and bells topped with Western jazz cymbals.

-- 5 p.m., Monday, Oct. 12 at the John Hope Franklin Center, Room 240. Screening of “A Por Por Funeral for Ashirifie,” a one-hour documentary directed by ethnomusicologist and musician Steven Feld about the funeral music created by Ghanaian bus and truck drivers playing antique squeeze-bulb car horns, bells, drums, whistles, and voices. Feld has performed and recorded with Nii Otoo Annan since 2005 and has toured across Africa, Europe and the U.S. as a member of their group: Accra Trane Station. Feld is a distinguished professor of Anthropology and Music at the University of New Mexico and a MacArthur Fellow.

-- 8 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 14 in the Nelson Music Room on Duke’s East Campus. Annan will perform with jazz musicians Feld, who plays the Ghanaian Ashiwa rhythm box bass, Alex Coke on the flutes/reeds and Jefferson Voorhees on the drums. Coke and Voorhees have performed and recorded with Accra Trane Station during the group’s 2007 visits to the U.S.