Students experience Africa through dance, music
Students dressed in yellow costumes danced, beat drums and sang an Igbo folk song, as they presented moonlight games and African music at Skidmore College.
The vibrant performance, part of professor Ruth Opara’s African Drumming and Dance course, transported students and spectators from Skidmore's Arthur Zankel Music Center to southeastern Nigeria, where Opara grew up.
In the course, Opara presents African music as a "constellation" grouping singing, dancing, instrumentation, dramatization and costume.
Around two dozen students from majors ranging from biology to economics participated. They performed drum rolls and a dance for planting that mirrored the daily lives of rural Africans. Then they presented the moonlight games, evening gatherings that are common throughout the region.
"I grew up playing moonlight games almost every night," said Opara, who stitched the yellow, star-covered costumes worn by students from cloth that she purchased in Nigeria. “Children gather to play games, sing, dance, play instruments and hear stories from the elders. It is an opportunity to entertain, relax and most importantly, educate children on societal values and morals.”
Opara noted that storytelling was at the heart of the tradition, and the Skidmore performance told the story of the tortoise and the lizard.
“We played various games, sang, danced and heard all the beautiful and didactic stories from our extended grandmothers and grandfathers, who took turns in telling us stories,” Opara recounted. “The stories impacted us so much that by the time we were done, we were either scared to go home alone, or very grateful for learning so much, or hopeful that the world would have many great people who would make it a better place someday.”
Students said they were inspired by the experience.
"Taking part in the African Drumming and Dance performance allowed me to feel as though I was being exposed to a small sliver of another culture," said performer Nicole Barry ’21, an anthropology major. "There was a certain energy that transpired as soon as we stepped foot into the classroom each week: excitement to work together in creating what, for a lot of us, was a completely new form of music."
The performance brought back memories for Ojoneke Abu ’22, who is from Nigeria.
“I had similar experiences with my grandfather,” she said. “It was nice to see Skidmore students learning about our culture by participating in it.”
