African drummer teaches lesson in diversity

Kumasi Odinga pounded the beat of traditional African music on a drum while about 100 fifth-graders looked on quietly, captivated by his performance.

Pausing briefly to speak to the Faine Elementary School and Grandview Elementary School students, Odinga tells the students how Africans used the drums to communicate over long distances, and the link between beats and spoken language.

“If you listen to the vocals and listen to the drum, the drum will reveal what I’m saying,” he said.

Odinga’s performance and a lecture on African history by Ed Vaughn were part of the continuing collaborative venture by the Dothan City Schools and the Wiregrass Foundation to beef up academic and cultural programs at Faine and Grandview, two schools with high populations of disadvantaged children.
The city schools and the Wiregrass Foundation are pumping about $2.2 million into the two schools over three years to provide quality arts and cultural programs and parental involvement and after-school initiatives.

“I think its going well,” said Margaret Johnson, the project facilitator. “We’re seeing greater participation in the afterschool program, additional aides in the schools and the children are benefiting.”

Odinga, a Nashville, Tenn. native, and former Big Three automobile designer, said he was happy to have a chance to teach children about music and their African heritage.

“African music, I find, is based around social, ceremonial and ritual,” he said. “It makes up what a society should have.

“I found out in Africa, the drummer himself was the mediator between man and God. If you wanted to pray, you hired a drummer, If you were feeling bad, having family problems , you hired a drummer. You wanted to party, you hired a drummer. A drummer was never left out of anything that went on on a day-to-day basis in African society.”

Wednesday’s event was also intended to pump up the students about a performance by the African Children’s choir they’ll see Friday.

The African Children’s Choir is made up of kids aged 7 to 11 from Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Sudan and Nigeria. The purpose of the choir is to show the world that despite their impoverished lives, the children of Africa are filled with hope, potential and dignity.