Presenters
Manhyia Palace-Kumase, Ghana
Otumfuo Asantehene’s Akomforehene,
Manhyia Palace-Kumase, Ghana
Keynote Speaker and Coit-Phelps Lecturer
Dagbe Cultural Institute and Arts Center, Ghana
Emmanuel K. Agbeli is a folk art painter, master drummer and dancer from Kopeyia, a small village in the Volta Region of Ghana.
Bizung School of Music and Dance, Ghana
Director
Bizung School of Music and Dance, Ghana
Tufts University
Richard Jankowsky, PhD, received his BA in Anthropology and Music from Tufts University and his PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of Chicago.
Fowler Museum University of California, Los Angeles
My research interests center around a range of issues relating to modernity and the arts in West and Central Africa.
Middlebury College
Professor Damascus Kafumbe is an ethnomusicologist, teacher, performer, composer, producer, filmmaker, and instrument technician.
Clark University
Nana Kesse is a historian of Africa and a Higgins/New Earth Conversation Faculty Fellow in Environmental Humanities at Clark University.
Harvard University
She has served as Interim Dean of Arts and Humanities at Harvard and chair of the Department of Music.
Columbia University
Ruth Opara’s research centers on African and African diasporic music and knowledge production.
Brandies University
Ben Paulding is a leading American performer and researcher of Asante Kete royal court drumming from Ghana. He spent years living in West Africa, performing and studying traditional music in Ghana, Togo, Benin, Gambia, and Senegal, and adapting that music onto his primary instrument: the drumset.
Tufts University
Emmanuel Attah Poku is a prominent master drummer from the Ashanti Region of Ghana, West Africa.
Stanford University
Ato Quayson is the Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies and Professor of English and African and African American Studies.
University of Michigan
Raymond Silverman is Professor Emeritus in the Department of History of Art and the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies.
Tulane University
Tony Yeboah is an expert on the histories of architecture and the built environment of West Africa. His research centers the city of Kumase, capital of the Asante Kingdom, in modern Ghana, where he was born and raised.
Performers
The Agbekor Drum & Dance Society was founded in 1979 by David Locke, professor at Tufts University.
Dagbe Cultural Institute and Arts Center, Ghana
Emmanuel K. Agbeli is a folk art painter, master drummer and dancer from Kopeyia, a small village in the Volta Region of Ghana.
Bizung School of Music and Dance, Ghana
Director
Bizung School of Music and Dance, Ghana
Tufts University
Emmanuel Attah Poku is a prominent master drummer from the Ashanti Region of Ghana, West Africa.
Atta Ko ’s Ahenema Cultural Troupe has been in existence since 2003. The New York–based eighteen-member piece performs drumming and dancing of some West African cultures, including Kete, Fontomfrom, Daansuom, and Adowa of the Akan; Kpalongo and Fume-fume of the Ga; Borborbor of the Ewe; Damba of the Northern Ghana; Bawa of the Dagarti; Wale of the Senegal and Mali, among others.
