AFRICA
[quicktime]http://condor.wesleyan.edu/openmedia/musicgrads/video/sem_08_03_africa.mov[/quicktime]
Panelists on site at Wesleyan University
Shaheen Ariefdien, former member of the pioneering South African hip-hop group Prophets of da City, is currently pursuing his M.A. in Social Anthropology at York University, Canada. His research focus is on the various articulations of hip-hop activisms. Shaheen was (and continues to be) involved in a number of youth educational projects using hip-hop as a tool for social justice and has facilitated several hip-hop related workshops in South Africa and internationally (including Norway, Holland, Northern Ireland, Canada and Angola).
Allan Mugishagwe graduated with a B.A. in Music degree from Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda in April, 2005. His undergraduate thesis was on the topic titled “Impact of Technology on the Recording and Production of Music in Uganda.” Upon completion, he worked with the Centre for Basic Research (CBR) in Kampala where he was an archive research assistant. At CBR he was part of process of collection and archiving of Ugandan popular music (2004 to 2006). He is currently finishing his M.A. in Music (Ethnomusicology) degree at the University of California, Berkeley (expected November 2008), and his specialization centers on popular music in East Africa focusing on Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. For his PhD, he will explore the relationship between gospel, war victims and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Uganda.
Panelists in Tanzania (Music Department, University of Dar es Salaam)
Imani Sanga, ethnomusicologist, choir director and composer, received his Ph.D. in Music from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa where he studied with Professor Beverly Parker. Currently, he is a lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. His publications include articles concerning music composition processes, gender in church music, and aesthetics of bird sounds in Ethnomusicology Forum, Journal of Popular Music Studies, and Folklore, respectively, and a songbook Nymbo za Tanzania (Songs from Tanzania). Dr. Sanga spent the fall 2007 semester at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Mount Holyoke College as a research scholar through the Five Colleges African Studies Program completing a book manuscript on the temporal and spatial aesthetics of Muziki wa Injili (Gospel Music) in Dar es Salaam.
Mitchel Strumpf, Professor of Music at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, holds an M.A. from the University of Ghana and a D.M.A. from the University of Washington. For the past 45 years, he has been studying and teaching African music traditions with an emphasis in areas of ethnomusicology and music education. He has taught in music departments in the University of Ghana, the University of Ife (Nigeria), the University of Malawi, and Africa University (Zimbabwe). Professor Strumpf strives to make the university music program an instrument to help the community in which it exists. He has this done by organizing choral workshops and symposia in ethnomusicology and music education, and developing courses such as “Music in the Community,” largely employing concepts of Music Therapy and Music-for-Development.
Kedmon Mapana, Assistant Lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam, recently completed his M.A. in Music there with a thesis titled “Transition and Change of a Music Tradition: A Study of the Muheme Tradition of the Wagogo People of Dodoma, Tanzania.” In Tanzania, as well as in the United States, Sweden, Denmark, Poland and Zimbabwe, he has gained much recognition as an outstanding music/dance workshop leader and lecturer, especially in topics related to the music and dance of his culture, the Wagogo. He will start Ph.D. studies at Seattle Pacific University in March 2009.