Hayes School of Music

Music Humanities Community Conversations Series 

The Music Humanities Community Conversation Series provides a forum for students, faculty, and staff at Appalachian State University and community members to engage current topics in music humanities through invited talks and workshops given by scholars, artists, and cultural leaders from Appalachian State and the surrounding region. Read more about our upcoming events below!

• The events are free and open to the public.
• Events will be in Schaffel Recital Hall or Rosen Concert Hall in the Broyhill Music Center:
• Attendees may park in the Schaefer Lot, Broyhill Lot, or Peacock Lot for free from 5:00pm to the end of the event.  The Broyhill Music Center is at 813 Rivers St, Boone, NC, 28608. 
• For more information, contact Dr. Jacob Kopcienski, via email at kopcienskija@appstate.edu or by phone at 828-262-7385.
• This series is sponsored by the Hayes School of Music, with several events generously co-sponsored by the Center for Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University.

Professor Nana Ama Oforiwaa Aduonum is a Kwahu Akan of the Aduana lineage in Ghana. Aduonum is an embodiment scholar-artist who believes in the power of our bodies. Who are we without our bodies? Aduonum teaches courses in Black Music, Ethnomusicology, and directs the West African drumming and dance ensemble at Illinois State University. Her research spans Africa, African America, and middle-passage focused areas.

She is currently examining how considerations of the Long Trudge and former dungeons could contribute to our understanding of Black identities,  imaginations in music, and the body. What is black music without the body? As a storyteller, choreographer, published author, composer, a nationally-recognized playwright and scholar/artist, and activist, Aduonum demonstrates how scholarly work and artmaking, how research and the artistic can converge. She is interested in both knowledge for its own sake and using that to foreground prickly issues to encourage reflection and deepened conversations. She uses her work to build community among all people, focus on “our shared values,” and give voice to the silenced and forgotten. As platforms for ideas and dialogue towards critical thinking, deep listening, and compassion, Aduonum’s works aim to move us towards emotional justice and healing.

She is a McLean County Woman of Distinction, a Queen Mother, founder of a school at Gomoa Obokrom, and the Founder/CEO/Consultant for Bi Nka Bi (“One must not bite another”), a workshop whose framework rests on the premise that any productive community work must begin with “uncovering our authentic selves.” Aduonum is the author of Walking with Asafo in Ghana: an Ethnographic Account of Kormantse Bentsir Warrior Music (2022), many articles, and performance art works.

Etua Wo Nyͻnko A, Etua Dua Mu: Towards an Embodied Reconstructive Archeology, A Practice-Led Approach to Knowing

• Thursday, February 19, 6:00-7:00pm. Free and open to the public!
• Q&A and reception to follow
• Schaffel Recital Hall, Broyhill Music Center
• Supported by the Hayes School of Music's Hayes Circle Fund

Bearing heavy iron shackles on my body, I trudged to the former dungeons for captive Africans who once languished there before they suffered the agony of the middle passage.  I did not have any research questions or artistic outcomes in mind. I quickly learned through the feelings in my body, while I sat, that the spaces offered evidence of hidden traumas. Feelings in my body helped produce knowledge, knowing, and experiences I had not considered, such as clues about the roots of African American music such as DuBois’ “sorrow songs” and Jones’ Blues People. 

I draw upon that experience, while calling up Akan epistemologies “Nananom afutuo/ElderCrits”-- like Etua wo nyͻnko ho, etua dua mu, to discuss my haptic way of knowing. Etua wo nyͻnko ho is often used to reprimand a person who is not showing empathy for people’s pain. We say Etua wo nyͻnko ho a, etua dua mu when someone dismisses another person’s physical or emotional pain. 

I will share my daily experiences in the former dungeons through poetry, songs, and movement to demonstrate how as an practice-led, immersive, experiential, and trans-sensorial approach, Etua wo nyͻnko ho adds depth to existing methods. Etua wo nyͻnko 1) can move us beyond conventional academic ways of interpreting and reconstructing the lives of people in distant times, places, and music, 2) has the potential to open discursive spaces to conjure Glissant’s “prophetic visions of the past” and 3) calls on a speculative nonfiction to imagine possible memories and pasts for the beautiful ancestors whose histories have “been deliberately rubbed out.” Ultimately, I probe, who are we without our bodies; can we experience the past through embodiment; how much knowing can we gain about ourselves and each other if we do pay attention to our bodies?

Performance of Walking with My Ancestors: Cape Coast Castle

• Friday, February 20, 7:30-9:30pm. Free and open to the public!
• Rosen Concert Hall, Broyhill Music Center
• Pre-performance talk and post-performance audience dialogue with App State's Dr. Laurie Semmes and Dr. Tsakeu Mazan
• Sponsored by the Hayes School of Music and High Country Humanities

Walking with My Ancestors: Cape Coast Castle (2019) is a one-woman award-winning multimodal performance piece that generates fresh perspectives on the experiences of the nameless African women, men, and children who once languished in the dungeons of Cape Coast Castle and suffered the agony of the middle passage. Based on original, firsthand research in the Ghana dungeons for African captives, the piece takes the audience on a ritual journey that leads to revelation, reconciliation, and rebirth. Through live drumming, singing, dancing, and acting the performer explores how our national and cultural problems connect with truths of our shared and painful pasts. Each performance ends with a discussion about histories, repair, affirmations, and futurities of a “people who past has been deliberately rubbed out.” Ultimately, it is a story we share about triumph over adversity, resilience, and survival.

Production History

Walking with My Ancestors was originally produced by Coalescence Theater Project and directed by Kim Pereira and Don Shandrow, and has been performed at University of Michigan, Cape Coast Castle, University of Georgia, University of Illinois, Middlebury College, University of Virginia, Agnes Scott College, University of Massachussetts-Amherst, Illinois State University, etc., and Edinburgh, Scotland. WWMA has won several awards including Outstanding Performance, Outstanding use of Music, Outstanding Production, and Outstanding Leading Role.

Reviews

“Walking with my Ancestors is a transformative experience. Ama’s performance was inspirational. It is a history lesson that needs to be told and Ama tells it beautifully.” - Jeffrey Albright, co-founder of Actors Collaborative Toledo

“Ama Oforiwaa Aduonum brought to the stage a culture most in the audience had never been exposed to. Her performance was mesmerizing and showed strength that brought the characters to life visually, physically, and vocally. The audience was on their feet as one at the end of this astounding story.” - Linda Ward, Miami University Alumni Association

“Walking with My Ancestors is a powerful theatrical voice in our difficult conversations about race in America today, connecting the audience to the cries for equality and justice? - Ted Miller, President, Washington State Community Theatre

“Walking with My Ancestors is a ‘Tour de Force’ which must be experienced as much as seen to be thoroughly enjoyed. Ama Oforiwaa is electric.”  - Rodney Woodworth, Actor/Director/Playwright

"Written and performed by Ama Oforiwaa Aduonum, Walking with My Ancestors is profoundly impacting and immediately relevant, her solo performance astonishing."  - Lucinda Lawrence, AACT Board member

Dr. Stephanie Diane Tsakeu Mazan

Dr. Stephanie Diane Tsakeu Mazan is a proud Daughter of Cameroon, a country whose nickname is “Africa in Miniature”. Born in a family where teaching runs in the blood, she embarked herself on the teaching journey in 2009. She taught French language and Francophone literatures in several high schools in her home country. She has been teaching French (Elementary and Intermediate levels) since 2015 when she moved in the US, in addition to being a guest lecturer in several upper-division classes and graduate seminars in several departments in the US as well in some Francophone countries. Passionate about teaching and doing research, her goal in life is to try to put a smile on every face she meets. Her teaching and research put an emphasis on the communalities that exist across cultures, in relationship with the African Philosophy of Ubuntu: “I am because we are.”

Dr. Laurie Semmes

Dr. Laurie Semmes is a full professor of ethnomusicology in the Hayes School of Music at Appalachian State University. She began her career as a private school band director and freelance French hornist in Sarasota, Florida. Dr. Semmes's research interests span Ukrainian-American bandura education and performance, music and propaganda, Cuban music and culture, and exoticism in musical theatre. She has presented at international conferences in Italy and Ukraine and at Society for Ethnomusicology conferences. At Appalachian State University, Dr. Semmes has documented the construction of a gamelan gong kebyar in Bali for the Hayes School of Music. Dr. Semmes and developed collaborations with La Orquesta Nacionál de Cuba to enhance performance and teaching opportunities between students and faculty. Her contributions to the field and her active engagement in ethnomusicology and music education have significantly enriched the academic community at Appalachian State University.