April
5, 2002
First
Five College World Music Festival to Be Held April 14 at Hampshire
College
The first Five College
World Music Festival, set for Sunday, April 14, from 1 to 6 pm
in the Red Barn at Hampshire College, will be on eclectic event.
There will be performances using unusual instruments, such as
the sarod, an Indian classical music instrument, and the ambira,
an African xylophone, and musical groups as diverse as a klezmer
band, playing a conglomeration of Greek and Central/Eastern European
music typically played at Jewish celebrations, and a gamelan group,
an orchestra of tuned gongs, metallophones, xylophones, drums,
strings, and flutes. The event is free, and all members of the
Five College community, as well as the general public, are invited
to come to enjoy music from many parts of the world. The festival
was conceived by six ethnomusicologists who teach at the five
campuses and is being launched with the support and encouragement
of their respective music departments, the UMass anthropology
department, and Five Colleges, Inc.
"World music
today means not only folk and classical traditions from the Americas
and around the world, but rock 'n' roll, blues, and pop music
as well," observes David Reck, who has taught music at Amherst
College since 1975. Satellite TV, inexpensive cassettes and CDs,
touring international troupes, travel, and immigration, he points
out, have created pathways for music to cross over into cultures
far from its original source. "There are rock bands in New
Guinea and Uzbekistan, and 'ud, shakuhachi, and didgeridoo players
in Massachusetts," he points out. Anthropologists and musicians
alike are discovering new insights into the ways in which music
and culture intersect and shape each other and, Reck adds, "listeners
are increasingly learning to enjoy the startling beauty of world
music traditions."
The eight groups and
soloists scheduled to perform at the festival will be playing
music from many different cultures. The Klezmer band is from Mount
Holyoke, and the gamelan group hails from Smith. There will also
be a Trinidadian steel band from Hampshire and the popular UMass
group Doowop Shop, representing one genre of American popular
music.
Among the individual
performers will be Jennifer Kyker '02 of Mount Holyoke on the
mbira, an instrument played for centuries by the Shona people
of Zimbabwe, and Arnab Chakrabarty of Hampshire College, accompanied
by guest artist Mayookh Bhaumik of Calcutta, on the sarod. Nicole
Joseph-Goteiner of Amherst will play South Indian music on the
violin, accompanied by David Nelson of Wesleyan University on
mridangam.
The audience will
have a chance to get in on the act, too, when Hampshire's contradance
band plays forty-five minutes of tunes for contradancing, with
calling provided by community musician/dance caller George Marshall.
Additional information
about the festival is available from Renee Fall in the Five College
office. Contact her at 256-8316.
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