"Bringing the beat from Africa to Kingston"
by Pamela Cornell

first published by PIC Press of Kingston, Ontario, November 1998; reproduced here with the kind permission of the author.

How does a young white woman from Scarborough become an internationally acclaimed specialist in West African drumming and dancing? Part of the answer lies in those oft-quoted words of Hillary Clinton: "It takes a village..."

In this case, the village is a wonderfully peaceful community of 300 or so on the banks of the Volta River in southeast Ghana. A village where, in 1990, the houses were made of mud-brick thatched with palms, without electricity or running water. A village where music is part of everyday life, both as a recreational outlet and for marking significant occasions like birth, marriage, thanksgiving and death.

Kathy Armstrong, now 33, could have pursued her interest in West African music by taking courses at Accra University, but it wouldn't have been the same as being immersed in the day-to-day life of a culture where music is a total-body experience. Where there's no distinction between performer and audience because music is integrated into everyday activities. Where Armstrong spent so much time at the home of her drumming teacher, Kwasi Dunyo, that his wife taught her how to cook the local foods.

The musical expressiveness that results from that kind of experience can be sampled in Kingston on Saturday, Nov.7, at 7:30 p.m., when Armstrong's Ottawa-based Baobab Young Performers collborates with Mark Sirett's Cantabile Choirs at Sydenham Street United Church in a concert titled "Out of Africa." As part of the program, Armstrong will be leading the combined groups in a Gahu - a colourful, dynamic blending of drumming, dancing, clapping and singing.

It takes imagination to picture that happening amidst the orderly pews of a traditional church. Armstrong has the vision and practical experience to bring it off.

She has led hundreds of Gahus in settings ranging from St. Martin's-in-the-Fields (in London's Trafalgar Square) to a hockey arena in Utah with 900 children. In Tennessee, she led a spiral Gahu, with everyone moving in concentric circles. And in a French village that had retained its 11th-century character, she drew the entire population out to a midnight Gahu in the old Roman marketplace.

Being on the move has been exciting but exhausting, so Armstrong is looking forward to staying closer to home with her husband for awhile.

Last year she began teaching a drumming and dancing course at Carleton University. The course is now required as "ear training" for all first and second-year music students. And with good reason, because it involves listening with an intensity seldom demanded in North American music courses.

"Students are used to reading music and taking lecture notes," says Armstrong. "In Ghanaian drumming, nothing is written, but it's not improvised either. There's a definite framework, with the lead drum asking 40 different questions and the support drums supplying each distinctive answer. The students have to be listening on five levels at once. It definitely sharpens their aural skills. They then write papers, reflecting on their learning."

The performance side of Armstrong's activites centers around the Baobab Young Performers. Now in its fourth season, this drum-and-dance ensemble started with seven participants and has expanded to 18, ranging in age from 12 to 18. They rehearse once a week at Ottawa's Fisher Park Collegiate, do a show in February, another in May, and make numerous guest appearances, including folk festivals and the Ottawa Storytelling Festival.

With feet bare and bodies wrapped in the brightly coloured textiles of Ghana, ensemble members sing, dance, clap, shake rattles and play intricate patterns on drums made of wood and antelope skin.

"The music and movement unlocks so much," says Armstrong. "It opens the mind and spirit to different ways of expressing ourselves. And it attracts people with different styles of learning, so we're a very eclectic group. One girl - an amazing dancer - is hearing-impaired. We have a boy who's a talented composer. Another boy in our group has been diagnosed wtih Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), but we seem to have enough happening to keep his mind and body fully engaged."

The skills, self-discipline and confidence Armstrong's program builds have resulted in an ensemble that, last year, made its Toronto debut at the Ford Centre for the Performing Arts and, this year, toured Washington, D.C. They have performed at Ottawa's National Arts Centre with the renowned percussion ensemble NEXUS, and have been featured on CBC-TV's Newsworld.

The group gets its name from the enormous African Baobab tree, known for its endurance and as a provider of food, clothing and shelter.

The voyage that took Armstrong from Scarborough to Ghana - transforming her in the process - began in 1986, when she was burnt out from studying to be a classical percussionist. She had just finished her second year at the University of Toronto, when she hoisted a pack on her back and set off on a four-month sojourn of self-discovery.

"As soon as my foot touched African soil, I knew it would change my life," she says. "I felt it really strongly."

Back at U of T, she joined the Flaming Dono dance and drum ensemble, where she met her Ottawa-born husband. Her first study trip to Ghana was in 1990; today, her Ghanaian drumming teacher is living in Toronto and has applied to be a landed immigrant.

Through young people in Armstrong's Baobab ensemble, the Ghanaian village where she studied has become twinned with the West Quebec village of Chelsea. Letters have been flying back and forth between school children in the two villages, and the Canadians have raised $2,000 to support education projects that benefit their pen pals.

By coincidence, the children of the recently appointed Canadian high commissioner to Ghana went to the Chelsea school, so they'll be bolstering the links during their parent's posting. It's a reassuring example of how globalization can be energized, not by greed, but by grassroots community-building activities.

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