Cultural dancers and drums

This past Friday I had a very unique and wonderful experience. Dayna and Kevin Garland came to Accra for the meetings at the end of the month. (Dayna is in the communications dept. at HCJB Global.) Kevin has a strong interest in African music and is a drummer. Through a contact that Kevin and Dayna have they met an expert drum maker, Vergasto. After talking with him for quite awhile they all decided to work on making him a website where he can sell his drums directly. He is so good that music students from UC Berkley come here just to meet him. To do the website, Vergasto gathered
several friends to play with him and also some dancers to put on a real concert for us. Words cannot possibly do justice to the private show we were privileged to see. I hope to have a video link to what we recorded at some point. They were all amazing. Kevin, Dayna, Lee and I drove all the way to down town Accra to meet them at the Art Center. After waiting about 1 hour for everyone to show up we followed them to a little housing area near the ocean where they had rented a space for the show. Eventually we were surrounded by onlookers who enjoyed it all as much as we did. I am not sure I understood all
that the dancers were interpreting but they performed 5 or 6 dances from all over Ghana and even Africa. To say they were amazing is a gross understatement!! Dayna and I got a brief dance lesson - hers is on tape:) After about a 2 hour show and "recording session" we all carried the drums back to the road where the guys took over a tro tro and we piled in. And I mean piled in. About 15 drums of all sizes and 20 people. It was crazy. The two guys at the back were literally hanging out the door. Crazy but fun. It really was just a wonderful time to meet more Ghanaians and to see a new aspect of their culture. We even were able to have a brief talk of Christianity and
Rastafarianism after the concert was over. Opportunities to talk come in the strangest places sometimes:)

You can see more pictures of the dancers and drums by clicking the link to the left.