CARNEVAL

This was for me a cultural exchange.

On last Friday evening and night I was performing with a music friend for a party of a carneval group in Kriens-Luzern (Switzerland). As we arrived we could feel the carneval with its very traditional mood.
A lot of people were surprised about us playing there. They maybe thought: what are the African musicians doing here. I can feel from their faces that  they may thought, we were lost and landed in their party. One person came and asked, if we need any help. We told the person, we have to perform here and we are okay. The organizer appeared and greated us with a very warm welcome. Suddenly I could see a lot of people coming and watching the program.
We opened the show that evening right at the entrance of the hall. I saw people watching me fascinated by the traditional talking drum. With my talking drum I spoke in Swiss German a greeting, welcome and other words. the people started to laugh a lot, because they didn't expect the talking drum to speak Swiss German. That was for me a good start to catch the audience.
We performed half an hour and it was so great.

Our second performance some hours later was in the big festival hall.
We played our entrance music with the bass drum, Brekete, and the talking drum, Dondo.
Those who came late, where a bit surprised as we entered the hall. We walked with the music around them, before we went to the stage. I could hear, as we stopped the music, a lot of cheering and clapping. This was giving us some strength and courage to continue in that very traditional place. For me this was a real cultural exchange.

I got the idea to involve the audience before we start the show. Because some of them are also playing in the traditional Guggemusic (carneval music band),  I gave to the women the female part to sing and to the men the male part of the songs. It was very interesting and funny, because the songs were in one of the Ghanaian languages. With that mood we entered quickly with our rhythms and songs and got a really good feedback. That increase our energy to dive into the music and performed a good concert with happyness till early morning.

We also really enjoyed their music.

Peter Donkor