Pangea

First of all, Pangea is going great, I'm having a blast. Monday morning I taught a class on American folk traditions in music. The class was scheduled to be an hour and about half way through a television crew showed up (you can see in the picture above). So, I did the second half of the class with a camera shoved in my face.

The class was directed at the Nigeriens present (mostly musicians) and it went really well. Everyone there seemed to enjoy it. It was just a surface skimming presentation on origins of popular American musical traditions. It was incredibly difficult to narrow down such a broad topic, but it was alot of fun to put together.

My favorite question that was asked during the presentation was, "Can you tell us everything about Johnny Cash?" At this point, I had about 5 minutes left in the class. We decided that I would do a follow up class highlighting a few artists. With input from the class we decided on Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Otis Redding. Basically, I'm just going to put together short bios of the artists and play lots of video and music clips. I think that there is an opening tomorrow that I am going to fill with my second class.

After my class was a demonstration of the biram by Malam Barka. You can read more about Malam Barka here. I don't think I can describe this instrument with words and be believed, so I'll just wait until I have some pictures. You can purchase Malam Barka's CD from Amazon here.

Yesterday, I was supposed to help out with a guitar basics class, but no one really showed up for that. I spent that time learning some West African guitar styles. It was really great.

During lunch, there were groups of people pocketed all over the Centre de Formation et de Promotion Musicale (CFPM) playing and jamming in various styles. It was beautiful and was where I realized that I was going to have a lot to learn and nothing to teach in any instrumental class.

Well, I'm going to get back to preparing for my next class. I'll leave you with a general overview of the week.

Monday/26: American & Nigerien Traditional Music

Tuesday/27: Jazz, Blues, Funk, Soul

Wednesday/28: Hip-Hop, Reggae, Rap

Thursday/29: Theatre and Expressive Arts

Friday/30: Ceremony and Performances

Every Night: Concerts

Every day has a videographer and several photographers, so I'll be linking to all available video/pictures as they become available. Also, I'm taking pictures in my free time and will post them soon.

Thanks for the picture Jeremy.