 The anti-colonial movement in Africa has always been emphasizing the role of men. The contributions of women are often ignored and really discussed. The opera is about a woman, Fun Milayo, who challenged British colonialism in Nigeria, in Yoruba land. Fun Milayo has learned that the king is trying to raise taxes, which heavily affects the market women, so she rallies them all together and the point is for us to overthrow the king or lower the taxes. The authorities neglected positions of traditional female power. You need to lower these taxes. If you don't do those things, then the king at the time, Viala Obalade, who I'm playing the spokesperson for, will have to abdicate. And nothing like that had ever happened before. It was a strike, so it covers a strike. And it's really fun. It's really fun. It was a very unique movement and I thought that it's a story that is topical at this point in time and deserves to be told using the medium of music and drama and dance. This is bringing a tradition and an art form that is ancient from a Yoruba courtly tradition in the modern day. So I think some of the most interesting work that we're doing in the orchestra is finding the ways in which we can use that traditional form in combination with the western orchestra that I represent. It is like all the moving parts. It has art, it has dance, it has music, it has just acting. So it's like all the great things we do for entertainment, all sort of packed into one. And it's live, right? So there's that element where it's not this pre-recorded thing, so it's happening for you in the moment. Many of my students are not even music students and yet within a period of, I don't know, four, five, six weeks, they're already bonding together to create this work. The course kind of took us through the history of African music, ethnic musicology, and then kind of interwoven itself with the opera. It's definitely a great opportunity to learn about African music, African dances, and also the culture. The course is mainly made up of two parts. The first part is about the theory of the opera. So it's kind of an intellectual and academic and cultural preface to the rehearsals. And then in the second half of the semester, we then go fully production. And it made me want to learn more about resistance movements and cross socioeconomic solidarity. What was really interesting to me was the bonds of solidarity she could form with women like her who received a formal education and market women who may or may not have received that formal education but could bond over that oppression and could stand together as a united front. I feel like I learned a lot about the culture of music and how every music is the most important part. Everyone should be musical in some way, it feels like. If you aren't, you should learn or even like dancing or storytelling, that's very important within the culture. What we do is to bring together students and professionals to work together. So there is also the pedagogic side to it, for professionals to mentor students. And I remember very vividly one student talking about Fumilayo as a historical figure and how she relates to Fumilayo as a person of color that's inspirational for her also as a student of color who can look up to Fumilayo as a historical influence. It's an African opera and I'm from Ethiopia so I wanted to learn more about African history. Hearing about women fighting against injustice during the colonization has really been a fun experience. We had these reflections that we had to write just on some readings that we ended up discussing in class and then eventually he started introducing the music. A lot of people might not realize how much the conductor is actually working with us on the stage live so he's not just up there counting away for us. He's really supporting, he's really giving us sort of a connection to him. He's making sure that we stay on task if we make mistakes or he makes sure that the orchestra is breathing with us and moving with us. It's really connected. We have to literally count and feel the beat in a different way. We have to listen to each other in a different way. With respect to the text we're singing Yoruba. So the chorus members have to get our mouths and apparatus around the unfamiliar sounds and to make sure that we do justice to the language and to the words and to the story. This is my first time hearing the Kavisi overture where I would actually be singing because I'm on stage at that point in time and when I heard it I was thinking to myself oh this is my favorite thing, this is my favorite thing in the world. The singing is done together with Nigerian talking drums and it really is unique and I've not heard anything quite like it. We have a character, the district officer who is sent directly from the British to sort of watch over the king and sort of make sure that the king is listening and so whenever that character comes in you hear more classical canonized harmonies that are very indicative of western music whereas when my character shows up or market women are on stage or the king is speaking you feel a lot more of the polyrhythm's happening underneath the instrumentals and in the chorus parts. Some of our actors are getting into their costumes and our amazing costume designer Bola who is our composer Bode's wife is helping and everyone looks amazing. It's very exciting. I haven't seen all these costumes yet. Bode and his wife actually got the costumes from Nigeria so everything was made there and they brought it here so kind of like helping put like the set, putting the pieces together helping people like find which ones for which and like actually helping them like tie the gillies and the wrappers because people don't even know how to tie them. My most exciting job is during the performances and during tech I'm in the booth calling cues so all the lighting and the sound things that are happening is because I say go and that's my favorite part of the job. I'm sort of pushing myself into these final steps of like memorizing chunks of dialogue and getting, you know, last intervals that I'm not understanding in my pieces. It definitely still feels like a challenge but I think that the way that Bode has set this up so that you have a mentor in your role, it's double-casted and I think that has been the most instrumental part in me sort of saying I can take this on. I was doing something like this back in Nigeria and seeing it's being done in this place I'm so happy and being part of this I was excited when I was called to do this when he's using the African idioms, the Yoruba idioms and also the Western idiom fusing them to get a try as much as he can to make good music out of it. It's, it sparkles. Bode was really adamant about everyone getting a chance to sing and to learn the Yoruba lyrics and to feel the polyrhythms of West African drumming and those sort of atonal harmonies that we're getting to experience some of us for the first time. What Professor Omojola is doing with the students is that he's introducing the class to a myriad of artistic expressions from different cultures that a lot of our students are not exposed to. Yoruba art is very rich and so we're really excited to be sharing that with our students. He's very comforting to his students and he has a connected relationship with them and he teaches them music in interesting ways that are not really standard like you wouldn't get in a classical music class so that's fantastic too, a lot of call and response when he's teaching the melodies and things. We have another dress rehearsal. It's coming along very well. I think this was a very good run that we just had and we're really looking forward to sharing with everyone in two days' time. Everyone gets along. We did this like exercise in class and we had to memorize each other's names which was really fun. I feel like you don't really get to interact with your classmates to this level in a lot of classes so that's something I really enjoyed. I think I feel this amazing sense of pride and of excitement because this is something that I always feel like where else can I possibly do this? And it's all because I have this fantastic colleague Ola Bode Omojola here and literally a master musician who is bringing a multi-hundred-year-old, half-millennial-old tradition into the modern world together with us here in the setting in Mount Holyoke and I feel very, very fortunate to be the conductor that he happens to be in the area that was called on to do this work.