Archive: Around Town

Lorrene Adams was looking for a new way to engage her music students at Lansing High School.  This summer she was able to procure Ghanian drums and last week Ghanese dummer and teacher Sulley Imoro came to teach her students how to play them.  After only a very short session they were sounding pretty good.

"It's my dream, hope and goal to instill in my students a life long yearning and need for music in their lives," Adams says.  "If opportunities like this can contribute to them being life long participants, performers, supporters and audience members as well as passing that love on to their children then I believe I have done my job."

Sulley (pronounced “So'-lay”) Imoro with Lansing high School students last week

Adams co-directs the 'VOICES" multicultural chorus with Dr Baruch J. Whitehead, Associate Professor of Music Education at Ithaca College, and she took a class with him last summer.  She knew he regularly takes students to Ghana and asked whether he could get some of the hand crafted instruments for her at an affordable price, directly from the craftsmen.  He did, and with funding from Lansing Theatre And Performing Arts (LTAPA) booster club, she was able to purchase seven drums, three rattles, and two bells.

"LTAPA enthusiastically supported my request and donated the money for the purchase of the instruments," she says.  "I chipped in the money for the covers for the drums and by summer's end we had 7 drums, three rattles and two bells!  In addition, Sulley came out to work with the kids."

Whitehead knew and worked with Imoro from his visits to Ghana, and after learning that Imoro had taught african dance and drumming in many colleges and universities across the U.S., he brought him to Ithaca College as a visiting artist.

"I was born as a dancer because my father was a dancer," Imoro says.  "I was taught by my father."

Lorrene Adams and Sulley Imoro

He learned drumming from his father as well as dance.  Although he wasn't able to finish high school, then President of the Republic of Ghana J.J. Rawlings recommended him as a teacher at the University of Ghana at Legon after seeing him perform in 1992.  He taught there until 1993 when he joined the Ghana Dance Ensemble and stayed for 11 years.  Today he is the the founder and director of the Mbangba Cultural Troupe and the Degara Bewaa Culture group of Tamale. Imoro also teaches the dance ensemble at the University of Ghana at Legon, and in the U.S., Europe and across Africa.


Adams hopes to expand this part of her program at Lansing High.  She says she hopes people will donate so she can purchase more Ghanian drums for the school, and would like to include drumming from other cultures as well.

"I would like to expand the Music in our Lives course to include Indian drumming as well as drumming from other cultures," she says.

---

v7i37