 I hope everybody can hear me in the back there, and as Eileen said, I am Scott Seaman, I am Dean of Libraries. Here at Ohio University, and I'd like to welcome everyone to Alden Library, and also welcome you to this session of Authors at Alden. And it's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Pascal Young. Dr. Young is Associate Professor of Multicultural Music Education and the Co-Artistic Director of the Ohio University African Ensemble, which is a group dedicated to teaching and preserving traditional African music styles of music and things. Dr. Young also directs a multi-ethnic ensemble that focuses on research, preservation, and performance of African-American and Caribbean styles of music and dance. Before teaching at Ohio University, Dr. Young also taught at West Virginia University where he served as the Director of the World Music Center and African Music Studies, and also at the University of Ghana where he was Principal Music Instructor and the Director of several ensembles. As a specialist in sub-Saharan music and dance and an advocate for multicultural music education, Dr. Young has presented in 30 states and in 15 countries. His new book, The Music and Dance Traditions of Ghana, History, Performance, and Teaching, as well as a 10-DVD set, Dance Drumming Ceremonies of Ghana, was released in September 2011. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Young in his discussion. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. For coming, it's just not the same thing you are talking about, the so-called music of Africa without actually seeing the performance, because Africans actually perform their music. They don't talk about it. That's the most important thing. You go to a village, you want to learn, don't try to put your pen and paper, come and participate. You learn through participation. That's how I was able to write this book. For more than 15 years, learning all these dances, the drumming, the sound, the languages. Because if you're not able to do that, you're not going to be an armchair, a researcher, go and sit down, put your cameras on, then the audio, now. That's not going to work. First of all, I would like to thank you all for coming and especially thank the authors, Library Series Committee for the invitation. It's been a very long journey trying to figure out the best and appropriate way to document the musical arts of Ghana. The task I gave myself, maybe more than 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, maybe 100 years ago. When I started school, my father was an organist, Christian, Roman Catholic. So growing up, you have all these western instruments, violinist, my favorite instrument, clarinet, all those things. And they kept on using the word music, music, music. We all started using the word music. When you ask the villagers, you go to the villages. And you're trying to equate that term with what they are doing. That was so difficult. Again, I want to emphasize and say clearly today, there is no word for music as we know it in western languages. All the African languages, they have almost a lot of things, but not for music. You go to ask music is modern, what we hear. Music is the diaries. You go to some villages. I went to a chief palace and there was a mosque class of 1951 on the wall. And I started to ask them questions, five hours for them to talk about that mosque. But they told me before they speak about the mosque, they have to perform it. Because the name of the mosque is the name of the dance. It's the name of the festival, it's the name of the drumming. So what is music? Is the music the mosque? Yes. Is the music the drumming? Yes. Is the music the festival? Yes. So as I travel around Ghana for more than 15 years, these four ethnic groups that I talked about in the book, music is the name of the festival. Music is the name of the dance. Music is the name of what? The mosque. Music is the name of the drum that was being used. So the concept of music as we know it in western cultures doesn't belong. It doesn't belong to what we talk about African traditional societies. There is no word for it. So what are we calling African music? Anybody? Yes. So to ask, it is an interdisciplinary activity. You cannot, it's like a bowl of salad. I've been telling my students, when you have a big bowl of salad, you go downstairs, bake a single. You have some carrots, some guacamole, or avocado. All those things are, once you mix them up, that is African music. You cannot remove the avocado from that bowl of salad, and they call it a salad. So you cannot just go to Africa today to study about the dance, to study about the music, the visual arts, and say, oh, I'm a dance professor. Teach me the dance. It's not going to happen. You're not learning the whole thing. Oh, I'm a percussionist. Teach me the drumming. It's not going to happen. Oh, I'm a visual artist. You're going to watch some videos. The costume is as important as the drumming. This dance, for example, by my help, talk about it. All those dancing, they're all what? Males. They're all men. Just like what? Women with lipsticks. We fake something. You know what I'm talking about. They're all men. But that's the reason why they're dancing. That's the reason why they're dressed like women, if you know the history. Now, before, I tried to talk about the book. Six years ago, I nearly gave up. Tried to a chance, getting too expensive. And the Baker fan, hey, Bob, that's good. They gave me some money to complete this project. And to go for all the materials. So somebody said, hey, you have to do this. She always said, that's our lottery. Stop playing lottery. Stop playing the mega million. Finish the book. And without that person, there's nowhere I can have this book today. So I'd like to thank Dr. Zama Barilla for all the support. And also, we have fellow faculty staff and students, including Butler, Sylvester Young, Steve Howard, Daniel Wainan, Koteb, several of them, for their support. Now, my presentation will be in four parts. The first part, I want to give you an overview of the book and then the DVD. I'm going to talk about my goal, why I actually embarked on this project. And then a student, my approach, my research method. Usually we are told you want to research, to literature review. Read all these books. I did the opposite. But people said, what a minute. Because most of the books I was reading, they were not doing the job. I was wrong. Almost all the books I was reading were about when it comes to African music and dance. And then we have questions. And now we focus on one of the dances. My favorite dance, Bamuaya. The book covers 22 musical stars or dances from the four major ethnic groups in Ghana. Diakan, Ebbe, Dagbamba, and Ga. Those are the four major ethnic groups. The scars in the book are not only concepts of music, dance, and performance in general, but also cultural perspectives about the arts. Performance practices, form and structure of these, I call them ceremonies. They are like symphonies. First movement, second movement, third movement. There are 12 different sessions. But when we go to the archives here and there, the music building, they've reduced all those African things to about two minutes, three seconds. I say, wait a minute. If I want to play Beethoven's Symphony, an orchestra, you're going to say, oh, for this presentation today, we are going to play the first movement of this symphony. But when it comes to African things, oh, this is this dance from this village. 30 seconds. That is not the dance. It's a ceremony, even party libation. It's part of that performance. Some of the dances without the prayers to the gods, they are not going to touch the drum. It's part of the performance. But for the western stage, oh, don't waste your time, party libation. Like this devil, no, no, no, no. Because Africans, those who perform these dances, they believe there is a connection between the living and the dead. You have to invoke the spirit of all those who participated in those dances. You have to make sure they come to celebrate with you. Also, I profiled the history, the geography, the social background of all the groups and then the ethnic groups or the people who perform these dances. And I realized that most of the terms in Ghana, because of the British influence, British colonization, they've tried to work. Instead of writing the traditional characters, languages, they want to write everything in English. And I changed that in the book. This is how the people pronounce this, how they write. So I measure and use the traditional unique characters of the various languages. And as a guide to multicultural or global education, that's the teaching method. That's the curriculum. So any teacher can take this book and teach all those 22 dances. With the DVD, you are going to tell what the children or the students are into the villages. These are not staged. This is the village where this dance was created. So for the 22 dances from the history that are gathered, I went to those villages. So you actually see the scenery, the type of buildings you find in Northern Ghana, and this is how they perform. In addition, I've included numerous photographs, maps and scores, musical scores. There is no way you can find a way. I don't know how you can describe this dance movement. You know, some of these have reviewed the book over 35 pages. Have you seen that before? A review of a book, 35 pages? Oh boy. It's like another book. And after reading, some of the students read the book and said, don't worry, this person just pissed her. Is that annoying? Because I don't know. Why? Because I didn't use her notation. She calls it green notation. Like lava notation. For African times, how many people are using lava notation in this building, in this school, to learn their dances? You can read about them. Oh yeah, a technique. But the students, professors, are there teaching them how to move. Lava notation, but I'm being penalized, crucified in this review for not using lava notation. This is the lava notation. See the villagers perform. And that is how they do it. So my way of helping you to know the movement after all the descriptions is to actually take you to the village. So teachers will be able to show the kids, oh, this is Bamaya, this is the history, blah blah blah. Now, let's go to the village and see how it is performed. So I prefer this medium of notating. What is notation? This is a form of notation. So after I believe that instead of putting the diagrams for the dances, I'll use this 21st century way of notating. So, next point is why this project? Why the music and dance traditions of Ghana? Why the DVDs? For years, from education, elementary school, high school, middle school, training college, to the university, I've realized that most of the books over 90% were not written by Africans. When it's time to talk about African arts, foreigners, and those written by Africans and, you know, you have to be politically correct. You have to use the Western terms. You know, nobody's going to look at you away. So, ethnic music colleges music. They went and focused on this dance. For example, there's a book on that. Right now we are looking at what? Singing, dancing, drumming. But they wrote their book almost 99 pages on so-called music and a paragraph describing dance. But that's not what you saw in the village. You saw both drumming dancing, singing. Dance, professor, dance acknowledges who go to Africa. They'll focus on the movement. Forget about what? The drumming, the visual arts and everything. So, I realized that we have to find a way to correct this. When you see a performer like a Broadway show, like a musical, you talk about everything. The acting, the so-called music, everything has to be talked about when you're talking about what? A Broadway show or a musical. So, I realized that those materials as I said they only focus on what they're calling music. In other words, organization of sound, the drumming. I forgot about the rest of the stuff. Number three, the terms that they used to describe these activities were just not adequate. They attempt to use the Western terms to describe all what they saw in the village. And number four, I realized that we don't have actually a curriculum to help teachers. We have multicultural education. Almost every school we go in all multicultural music. But we don't have the materials for the teachers. So, I actually laid out a one week curriculum, a month curriculum, a whole semester, a whole year so teachers can actually take these dances. From the beginning, my goal is to find the appropriate, respectable, respectful, and academic way of capturing all these experiences in the villages. Most important thing, I want this book to be used in Ghana and outside Ghana. You'll be surprised that you go to our library. Most of the books on African music, Ghana music are not in Ghana. Why? Because African musicologists they've written all these things but they are not thinking about what the people, from whom they got all the information. Because they realize all the meaning. Maybe they will not say before they have written because the terms they are using, schools in Ghana, teachers in Ghana will not understand those terms. So, the book is to the basic. This book is now University of Ghana. They've already got a copy, only one copy and the professor will not give it up. So, a class of 100 students you give okay, hit page 55. They'll finish the club, bring my book. So, I'm working now to make sure that all the libraries, all the schools in Ghana, the next two or three years, they all have copies. So, it's not like because after all the material, all the things are collected, before this book was published, and sent draft to the villages. The chiefs sat down, they called the opinion leaders, they went page by page. Oh, is this correct? Oh, yeah, that's correct. So, I'm not ready for people to say, oh, this information is not correct. Don't go and blame the villages and the chiefs because they have cross-checked, rechecked, cross-checked this information. Some of the information first in history. Now, the history of Keter is a dance among the accountants. Nobody wants to talk about why that dance was created. But, nobody wants to talk about that, the history. Because around the 18th, 19th century women in that bone, nothing Ghana, were treated like what? I don't want to use the word. But that's the word the chief used. He said, Pascal, put it there. The women were like, oh, inferior beings. They were treated like that. Sorry to use that. The chiefs said, record it, record it. If they kill me, father's correct. It's okay. Because the way they were treating the women for two, three years, no reigns. People were dying, no food. They contacted the god. They believe in all this ancestral worship. And the gods told them, well, if you want the reigns, start treating women like equals. But before you do that, you go to dress like the women and dance for three days and the reigns will come. But the women will not give you that clothes. Go and make up your own. So the guys will say, wait a minute. You know the corn, the huskies, they used that to make their sketch. The god, go and kill a monkey with a black fur. Use that for your hair. Hair like a scarf. Because those of them know they have very long black hair. So the god, you have to have that. So they have to look for black monkeys to kill. And they use that for their hair. Then you have to make your own fakes according to special days. So you have to have your breast. And then they started this dance for three days back and forth on the streets of the village. The third day, the reigns. So by Maya the river is now full. Now we have the fallah is full. Now we have a lot of water. So that's the rest of this dance. So up to today. But you know they realize that when they perform they lose their way, more way. During this for three to four hours are you kidding me? Now the women are saying wait a minute. This is fun. So the women are also performing this dance. So just three days. Now they say wait a minute. We want the reigns every year. So it's now become one of the most performed dance in Northern Ghana. So if you listen to it. So why do you watch this? Why do those guys dress like? How do they call them here? Men who dress like women? Oh dracoins. No, no, they are not African dracoins. That's a history for them. So having established my goal, my reason for doing this project that they're collecting going to these villages performing with them, eating with them. And students please, you go to Africa you want to get the information put all your ego somewhere. My father died at the age of 105. So don't tell me what the food they are eating the water they are drinking is not good for you. Organic. Everything's I was growing up. There was no fridge in our house. My mother would prepare the soup fresh every day. The water sometimes you feel like it's not good but well those germs would die after all the organic stuff. So I didn't want to waste so much time citing all these books. So I just went performing with them, eating with them. All these 22 villages if I give you my name, oh my god you fred to Ghana today you'd be like a god in that village. They open the doors for you because the trust is there. 30% of what we are getting from the book and the DVD is going back to all these villages just to help them continue with their work. So I learned the languages, the songs, the dance the drumming and everything because there's no way you can learn these dances or talk about these dances without actually participating in these ceremonies. I interviewed several performers other chiefs master musicians more than 3,000 people go down and focus on one oh this is the chief now sometimes it can be okay I'm the chief so so the chief will tell me something and say okay fine, I'll go to another person I'll go to another person I'll go to another master drummer then at the end of the day I'll put everything together then back to the villages, okay yeah that's correct. Then I wanted to find the best way of putting these materials but since there is no equivalent term for the concept music because you cannot see music through the lenses of Bach Beethoven and Brahms the struggle or the delay is actually finding the best way to actually capture all these effects I could have written this book about 10 years ago I wanted to make sure the terms the words I choose would be a lot acceptable I'm not thinking about jazz the words of outside Africa but to the Garnians because all the things I saw were all interdisciplinary I want to emphasize that word you cannot go and study drumming in any African village without the dance they are connected because the name of the dance is the name of the music is the name of the instrument is the name of the festival so how are you going to go to the village oh cannot learn Damba nothing gonna Damba is what is a dance Damba is what the drumming Damba is the name of the festival is what you want to learn the chief will ask you is what I'm talking about if you want to learn Beethoven Symphony No. 5 you all know what you're talking about but when you come to African cultures because you don't have a word for music they name their performances after instruments so you have Palongo that's the name of the drum that's the name of the dance that's the name of what the drumming and the rituals and the festivals and our occupations after who? that's the hunter's dance so it's named after the hunters or their name after what the visual arts, the mask the costume and the rest also as observed by a British have no musicologist and this applies to Ghanaian music music is both a social fact and multi-media communication and there's no isolation conceptually from dance drama, ritual, costumes and the rest you cannot go and break all these things into pieces though you're not eating salad you're eating carrot I want you to eat the salad I enjoy so to enjoy the salad you've got to make sure you have everything in that bowl so having just satisfied myself with all the terms instead of the music I use dance, drumming, ceremonies musical types musical events musical arts all just to capture all the activities so for each ethnic group or for each dance you're going to read what the history the function the organization the instrument the form and structure performance roles dance, movement drama and objects of art so I'm not writing as a music person I'm not writing as a dance person I'm not writing as a historian but that's what I saw in the village all these things coming to play in one performance so if you're a history professor the book is for you if you're a geographer the book is for you if you're a visual artist the book is for you if you're a dancer the book is for you because that is what is happening in the village you go to a performance all these different disciplines are at work