In The Ridges Auditorium on Friday, the clanging of a cowbell kept time as students in a circle of steel drums practiced new rhythms, their heads bobbing with the music.
Dr. Paschal Younge and his wife, Zelma Badu-Younge, walked in and out of the steel-drum circle, took pictures and smiled as students learned to play the Trinidadian percussion instruments.
The students were preparing for the Third Annual World Music and Dance Festival, a celebration of the diverse cultures that engage in the discourse of art throughout the world.
Throughout the week, workshops and lectures will be held on a variety of topics, including Chinese dance, Japanese Taiko drumming and an open forum focusing on Latin American and Caribbean culture and arts, the last of which takes place Wednesday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Walter Hall Rotunda.
This particular group of students was rehearsing for a concert that will take place on Saturday. The concert will be a culmination of all the events that occur this week and will take place in Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium.
Younge said that the goal of the festival is to immerse students in different cultural experiences to reach a new understanding of the meaning of art throughout the world.
“You start to understand (art) from a different perspective,” Younge said. “If you actually start engaging in (different arts), you start to appreciate the artist and understand the work that is actually happening.”
Badu-Younge added that all the workshops and the concert are designed to reinforce and enhance the material that students learn in the classroom.
Michael Ofori, a graduate student studying international studies, and Sam Terkel, a junior studying audio production, will be performing in the steel-drum portion of the concert.
“If you think about it, we are using instruments from Trinidad to play songs by Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, and you have Ghanaians playing it, and you have Americans playing it,” Ofori said.
Terkel confirmed Ofori’s sentiments about the power of music to unite different cultures.
“I think that is another level of music being a universal language,” Terkel added.
ds834910@ohiou.edu
