Story in our  travelling  or  van Gogh as an adventure

Our family holiday this year was in the Netherlands, Egmond. To get up every morning with the wonderfull view over the see, sand and gras was our first aim in this holiday. The colours of the sky with its various clouds changes rapidly and reflects on the little village of Egmond. You can see the wind in the growing of the plants. Every time going out and visit another city, we enjoyed the sightseeing while just driving there so much. The city gives you excitment, after hours of walking around and seeing known areas, we came back to Egmond and it took all the tiredness of the day away.

In every holiday we do an adventure. As we  get older our adventure was this year the museum of Vincent van Gogh in Amsterdam. When we were in the queue my daughter spoke already a lot about the museum we are coming to enter. Because she studies graphic design, she already knew a lot about it. So we started to discuss about van Gogh and his life. It was sad and not funny. The only people, who didn`t put effort in was me and my nephew. Specially me, I don`t know anything about painting so I didn`t know what I should achieve from it, but I still want to go.

Often I made a lot of jokes with my nephew about why somobody comes and shows his paintings and a lot of people from allover the world line up to watch them.

We were in the queue for more than an hour. I can see excitement from my wife, she could not wait to enter this museum, including my last born, he was also so interested to enter and see. That gave me courage and I started to enjoy the queue. As we entered, the beginning of the painting didn`t give me any knowledge or feelings of interest. You watch and read and watch and read. But as we got more and more inside, floor by floor, suddendly my interest was kicked and I can see the painings so real and even see what was the reason of the paining. And if you read the text it was exactly the way I was thinking, when I watched it. I found myself discussing with my elder daughter about the paintings and she was surprised about my knowledge and interest. The art just touched me so much. The paintings have drawn me inside and told me stories.

The further we got the more the whole family talked about this art work. My nephew knew about painting from Highschool, but in Ghana they didn`t teach van Gogh.

I heared about it, but never saw the original ones. Now seeing the original paintings made you to feel real art. As a musician it immediatly draw me into my art and music.

This brings me to my motto into a bigger world: Art brings energy, energy brings happyness.

angel patience

Our new book, printed this year July by Paramon Verlag, Switzerland.

The story is all about patience. The characters are traditional drums from Ghana: the Ewe drum set with percussions: Adzimevu, Sogo, Boba, Esevu, Kidi, Kagan, Gakogvi and Aya.

This family is called Drum and lives in a village called patience. The love and patience they have for the people got them a lot of friends. They became famous, because of their names. Often they go to shopping and meet families and have a chat about daily life activities. As you know children like to get a lot of gifts, like toys, the main character Kagan got and demanded always a lot of toys. He always wants to get more, although he has a lot of them already. This behaviour made him to loose a lot of friends. Many families don’t want their children to visit Kagan anymore, because of his behaviour of demanding.

But one day things changed. He had a dream about an angel, who was called Patience. In his dream he was asking the angel:“ Why are you called Patience? Is it the patience like our village name?“ and the angel replied: „ yes excactly!“

 The angel was speaking to Kagan about the meaning of its name and described what you can gain from this name. You can get more than you ever wished, you can get friends and you can get happiness.

This leads me to my motto: „music brings energy, energy brings happiness!“

Buy one and enjoy this story, together with your children or grandchildren.

You can order the book directly through our website email (contact) or in various shops and online. 

This is where you can get or order the book:

Amazon

Thalia Holding GmbH

Weltbild

Hugendubel

Mayersche

Osiander

Libro

Morawa

Orell Füssli

And in the National Libry of Germany Frankfurt available.

This is the German version (Engelsgeduld) and the Englisch one is coming soon. We will keep you informed.

A wonderful cultural journey through time

A wonderful cultural journey through time 

100 years Anniversary:

organisation god helps Uganda in Zizers, Switzerland

September 2016

On this festival we supported Uganda. We are there as the African presenters. There were a lot of activities on this festival. Bookwriters were there to give speaches and other organisations had their stands on the festival place.

We had the African stand.

From 9 am. till 6 pm. we offered every 45 minutes a workshop and presented a concert. Aaron and me started the day with a show to announce the starting workshop.

After two workshops, we got people lining up to take part in the next round. This kept going on till the evening. The workshops and concerts had its own story to tell.

 In the afternoon we got half an hour brake and we used that opportunity to watch around on the festival.

Every stand you go had its own history to tell. You can see pictures and working tools of 100 years ago being used in Zizers / Chur. You can follow the production of the farmers of the area, such as seeing the cornmill, cider press or snaps distillery. We had possibility to try some of them by ourselves.

We visited also a stand where they dressed you up to look like the people 100 years ago. A lot of families dressed up like this with their children and took pictures in black and white with that old type of camera. And the studio looked also like 100 years ago, with its chairs, cupboards and room items. This was really fascinating. Suddenly as we were watching them, some of the workers there started smiling at us, talking to eachother. We got closer and they said, they want to show us a picture. We saw then old pictures of Africans who visited the Swiss friends 100 years ago in this village. Such a surprise! We were the only two Africans in that Moment on this stand. So we use that possibility to play a bit a theatre. Aaron should dress like those Africans 100 years ago in Zizers and I will come as a musician friend who visited him in that time. After they dressed Aaron up and me standing next to him in African dresses, with a talking drum under my armpit, waiting for taking picture, people started to gather and watch us. I think it really looked to them like a cultural journey through time.

After taking the picture, a lot of people asked to take pictures with us. We nearly missed our next round of giving workshop. Suddenly we saw the organiser walking towards us: „ people are waiting for you!“ Aaron undressed fast and we quickly went to our stand, 10 minutes late, but they were still waiting for us. The workshopo went on successfull and we had a good show.

 Finishing and to pack the drums was another surprise. We found out, the Swiss working there, were all relatives. Since generations they had contact and exchanges with African people. Everybody who helped us there, was telling us a story about where they have been in Africa. Some where also in Ghana before and many of them still live in African countries and just came for the festival.

The wonderful cultural journey through time brings the motto : music is energy – energy gives happyness. 

Celebrating Ghana and Africa

Celebrating Ghana and Africa: 6th August 2016, Geneva, Switzerland

There were a lot of programs going on, which was fascinating me so much on this day.

They trained the children, who live in Geneva the traditional dances from Ghana and let them perform. They really took the show very seriously and gave all their energie. Our group wings of a dove percussion power was supporting them with the music.

A wonderful fashionshow was also part of the program an they showed beautiful african dresses, designed by a Ghanaian, who lives in Geneva.

We also had to lead the chief and queenmother with music on stage. It really felt like we are performing in Ghana. The Ghanaian Ambassador arrived and we welcomed him with music.

There you could feel good energy in the place. Wings of a dove was cooling the whole place with a nice percussion and flute music. We played very old songs from Ghana and you can see the elders, who knew those songs were singing it together with the flute.

Smiling was in everybodys faces. The children felt so exiting and were walking around happy.

We catched the mood and put up a very nice performance. Additional the acrobatic show was very fascinating and surprising for everybody. The cheering and applause was going high.

This brings me to my motto : Music is energy - energy brings happyness. 

Lyca TV programm 2016 Zürich

 For launching Lyca TV in Zürich we took part on the intercultural programm. There were a lot of groups from different countries, such of India, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Switzerland, Burkina Faso and we presented Ghana. The act was very dynamic and all the groups on the stage gave their best. The Braziliens showed their beautyful costumes and performed a very nice dance. The Indians changed the atmosphere with their own costumes and their dance. After the Swiss breakdancers took over and blast the whole place with their dance and styles. The Capoeira group performed and cooled first the place down slowly and also then came up with their thrilling magical fighting dance and kicked the audience on their feet again. 

We took then over and came in with a powerful dance from Ghana called Takaj, in which we used our beautyfull smock costume. If you swing this dress through the dance it opens and the show becomes very impressive. We drawed the attention of the audience so that the whole place was quite watching the movement of the dress in the rhythm. The dancers could feel this atmosphere and gave more power to it. The more power they gave, the more the dresses opened and responded to the movement. It is a harmonical combination inbetween the drumrhythm and the dancemovement with the smock.

We then surprised them with our acrobatic display, which brought the audience back to the shouting out loud atmosphere and enjoying the show. 

The group from Burkina Faso also came in with their dynamic djembe playing and singing. They took the audience surprise from beginning and really take them into the music journey further into Africa. The audience followed the journey, felt the music and all of them were catched by the mood of dancing wild towards the rhythm.

The  whole place was from beginning till the end dynamic and cheering, which confirmed my motto again:   Music is energy - energy brings happyness. 

Being a star infront of your dentist

2016 - 60th birthday concert in Baden

We are there as a surprise for the wife of a dentist, who was working for Africa. As we arrived in Baden the daughter came and told us, please try to stay away from the audience, because my mother doesn't know you are here. We want to see her in the hall with a beaming in her face, because she loves African music.
 In the hall the buffet was upstairs and the concert will then take place in the downstairs. That is how the whole thing began.

as we are on the stage I can see somebody was beaming from far. We sang a happy birthday song with the audience and her family used that possibility to present the gift on the stage. As she came to the stage, you can see and feel her good mood to have us there. After receiving her gift, she thanked us for being there. We made her feel as if she would still be in Africa.

As I always present my birthday gift as a workshop, I did the same at this party. I wanted 10 family members to take part in the workshop as a gift for the lady. The request was open so nobody was willing to come. As you know, everytime people are panicking at the beginning, because none of them have taken part in African percussion and they are afraid to be embarrassed infront ot their family. 
So the son in law of the lady went round and picked people by himself. As they sat on the drums, there was one chair left and one drum. Now the lady made an announcement that there is man going to Ghana with his son on the next morning. So she would love that man to take part. I trained with them and then performed a short piece for the lady. The audience was thrilled.

After the show as they were introducing the musicians to the audience and they reached my turn and introduced me as a Ghanaian living in the littel village of Sins. One table was applausing and chearing so strong, everybody was watching the table and saying, yes he is from your village.

The husband of the lady came to the stage and said that all the audience are dentists and here with their wives. The dentist from your village is also here.
After the show I went to their table and greet them. I saw them and knew this is our family dentist who is known by my wifes family since long time, even before I came to the village.

This is were my motto comes in: Music brings energy, energy brings happyness.

The taste of being a star  -  Zanzibar


Zanzibar and the 60th birthday concert

In January 2016 we performed in Oberfrick at a 60th birthday celebration. The house we played in belongs to the shooting club of the region and this was also the title of the house. These circumstances took us alomst an hour to believe that this is where we are playing. 
As a Ghanaian having no connection to gunhouses, I was shocked driving there. The road was tiny and rough and it was the only road leading to this place. We had to follow the signboards. What helped us to believe that this is where we will perform was special wood torched which you can see from far. That gave me courage to drive closer. As I arrived there I didn't part next to the house, I left my car on the street. Then I walked closer to the house and I saw two women standing infront of the door. They saw I was suspicious and they are laughing. I got closer and one asked me:"Are you Mr. Donkor?" and I said: "Yes!" They told me to park well, because the event is in the house and the woman was the one who is celebrating her birthday and contacted me weeks before.
We got inside and prepared for our performance and started punctually.
I started with telling jokes of how we came to this house with suspicious feelings.
Then we wanted to present a gift to the lady celebrating. The gift was a game like a workshop. We got some women and men taking part, brought them to the stage and practiced. We then presented together a show, which was realy great and funny. This took fears from the other audience and in the end everybody wanted to try the drums. This kept the party so dynamic till the end.
Then we found out in the brake, there is a musician from Zanzibar in the audience and we asked him to jam with us. We took the audience by surprise, because they didn't know that he is a musician. The party took the direction to a fabulous mood.

This confirmed my motto again  -  music brings energy and energy brings happyness.

Music journey from Africa to Europe

Concert in Pratteln, Feuerwehrmagazin: January 2016

Just arriving from Ghana around 10 a.m. and teaching from 1 - 6p.m. at the musicschool Frick, I went to perform on the concert in Pratteln in the evening. The event was for the firemen organisation of the City of Pratteln.

I was still full of music from Ghana, where we had the christmas and new year celebrations. We played there from traditional to all kinds of modern music and we played for many hours nonstop. So this was still in me and inspired me to get the strength and energy to make this nonstop music journey.

At the concert I joined in the group of Heiri and his friends as a percussionist. The style we played took me back to Africa. I enjoyed it and really gave them the groove of a collection of rhythms.It was a very dynamic concert, swiss and african musicians mixed.

It confirmed my motto: music gives energy, energy brings happyness 

Missing your hero: Prof. Francis Nii-Yartey

Entering January 2016 with the lost of a very big icon of Ghana, was a sad moment for a lot of artists.

Prof. Francis Nii-Yartey was a big inspiration of my intire life.

Where I always remember him was, when he choreographed a program for our president J.J. Rawlings.

He invited some groups of the Greater Accra Region of Ghana, of which he selected the artists to perform at the Accra sportsstadion for the president.

We started the rehearsal at trade fair in Accra and continued in Accra Sportsstadion, where we then supposed to perform.

As everybody knows, when joung people meet, there is a certain kind of competition specially among the boys to show  yoursself and feel big infront of the girls.

This behavour became a bad luck to me. We decided to run infront of the crowd on the sportstrack of the stadion. I was about to win the race, missed my step and fell, slided over the pavement and part of my skin on my shoulder was rubbed off. I was send to the stadion clinic for treatment. On my way going I felt so sorry for myself to do such a foolish mistake, because I like to watch Prof Nii-Yartey when he was teaching the dance ensemble in Legon and I thought in that moment I blowed the chance to work among in his project.

After my treatment they brought me back to him.  I was so scarred, because I thought now he is going to be annoyed with me and tell me off. But he just watched me, shaked his head and said: „ hmm! Go and join your group.“

At this moment I was confused. I don’t know if I should feel happy or what is coming next.

On the next day coming to the rehearsal, I didn’t know what I shall expect. I am a drummer, so I was among the drummgroup. We were playing a piece on the Fontomfrom drum, which  Big Boy was teaching us. I felt so difficult, because the wound has been dried. The Fontomfrom drum has been carried and we were playing it, so the hands are always rised up in the air. I felt a lot of pain, but I didn’t want to give up, because I wanted to play in that program.

After the rehearsal days, they started to share the costume to those, who are going to be among the program. We had different coulors of costumes. I was very tensed, I thought because of my wound I will not get a costume and therefore I will not be among the performance.

The sad part will be, the program will be on the TV, which everybody is looking forward to see us. Specially the people in Nima, who always saw us joining the bus to the reahearsal.

We stand in line to get the costumes and when it was my turn, Prof. Nii Yartey asked me to step aside. I could’t show my tears, I swallow it and said to myself: „ You see how stupid you are to get such a chance an blow it up.“ I don’t know what to do to myself as I was standing aside. I gave a lot of advice to myself while I was standing there and a lot of artist passed by and get their costumes.

But Professor is a Professor. I would have been so happy, if he would have shouted on me on the first day and really put me off and send me home, than let me rehearsal till the end and let me stand here now.

At the end those who were selected got their costumes and we have to stand by groups. I was still without costume so I cannot join my group. He watched me and said: „Hey Red, which group do you belong to?“ I responded : « Kusum Gboo dance ensemble »

He then shaked his head the same again and made : „hmm!“

He started to speak to the groups about the performance. Then he said good bye to all the participants and wishing them all the best for the performance.

The groups started to go and wait for their buses. I was still there discussing with my group how disappointed I am, but it is my own fault. I will learn from this.

I just finished speaking this and turned my self to walk to the bus and I saw Prof. Nii-Yartey throw a costume to me. I hold the costume as if I should run with it. I hold it an stand there like a statue, because I thought it is a mistake. He then said: „you are a drummer, join the yellow costumes!“ In this moment I want to hold my screeming until  I will reach inside the bus, but I could not make it. I screemed and I think all the artists could hear it.

Till now everything I do, I always remember him. I used a lot of what I learned form him in my teaching in schools.

May Prof. Nii-Yartey’s soul rest in peace.

We will never forget your beautyful and charming choreographing.

Music on christmas took all my pain away

A report from Eguafo, near Elmina in the Central Region of Ghana in West Africa

Since I was born and grew up in Accra. I often visit my village Eguafo in the Central region of Ghana. I never got a chance to spent the christmas in Eguafo till this christmas 2015 together with friends from Germany.

On the 24th night it looked like nobody nows what to do in the village, so we the artists invited our Sankofa group, who based in Eguafo, to come and play. In the end it became very dynamic and interesting. A lot of people joined in and we decided then to make a little parade with traditional music and dance through the village. Every street we reached, we got more people. Before we reached our starting point again, it was about three o`clock in the morning. The German friends got tired and went to sleep a bit.

The nice part about it was, I thought everybody will also go home and sleep, but the youngsters among wanted the music to continue. So I really used that opportunity to sing some old songs of the village, which I have heard since I was ten years old.

It happened that most of them never heard those songs. I have to teach them the songs and we performed it. After  a few hours they knew a lot of olden time songs. They decided to parade throught the village again, because they felt proud to demonstrate those old songs. Sometimes the elder people passed by and joined in. And many people started to remember traditional musicians from the village, who passed away. They started to appreciate them. They said: « You boys remind us of the bosue group. » And as an artist I felt so happy, to perform in my village and wake up almost forgotten music and its musicians. That gave me strength to continue playing the leading drum with devotion.

Those who are good in percussion instruments of the Sankofa group, asked a permission to go home around 4.30 in the morning. Which I was then happy about, because my hands were really hurting. Playing from 10 pm til 4.30 am… that is long.

The music entered some of the youngsters so much, although the Sankofa drumers have left, that they always told me:“ Bra Kofi, let`s continue!“ There we started again. They sang some songs, which were also new to me and I have to learn it from them. One of the village boys is calling himself after „Shatta Wale“. This name is known in Ghana for a Rap musician, who is based in Accra. This guy who named himself after Shatta used the old songs he just learned from me a few hours ago and transformed it into Rap. We were then only few people and I am the only percussionist left. I have to form the rhythm and create some to fit into the Rap music. It was so beautiful.

Around 6 am we were done. My hands were pumping as if somebody would messure my blood pressure.

As everybody left, I couldn`t get up from the chair anymore, I was so tired and dozed on the chair. Those who got up in the morning, started to laugh about me, that made me wake up.

I then had to orginize the afternoon of 25th, the big day. Quickly showerd and hit the road.

The food was ready and we all were eating as usual on christmas day. Then we visited family members.

Funny was, every family house I enterd asked me:“ Who were those people, who played music till day break? Are they your people from Accra? Where did they learn those songs?“

So I called the names of the people who took part from Eguafo and they were all surprised. And I revealed myself to be to one leading the group through the village with those songs.

That of course spread in the village like a rumor. I arrived in the house and found myself in the middle of youngsters, who also learned the songs we sang yesterday. They tought it to others and they wanted us to performe. I just didn’t want to think about my hands.

They brought the drums and the music started. We played till 5 pm. Then I couldn`t continue anymore. So I told them just to parade by themselves to enjoy the 25th.

That is the first time I enjoyed my village since I have been visiting the village as a child. I heard a lot of traditional music in Accra, Nima, but in the village Eguafo it was were I, at the age of 10, joined a group of elders, known as « bosue ». Through this experience I always return to Eguafo, where my parents came from.

 That is were my motto was confirmed : « Music brings energy, energy brings happyness ! »

African week in ISB Aesch Basel, Switzerland

Percussions, dance, drama, storytelling, african village and  market scene. For many years we are working with ISB grade 5. We really work with them on the african field. We teach them traditional songs and its dances. This year we were four teachers working with 85 children.

As we do it every year in the beginning we take away the shyness and bring them the motiviation to participate. You will see them realizing their improve and every day it goes further and further. The reason why we like to work with ISB grade 5 is, the children always knew the group of last year grade 5 and make a competition out of it to perform better and show it to the grade 4 and the whole school. That’s how we do the workshop every year. This give us, the teachers also the possibility to work with them without hesitating.

This year I was teaching them a story about a boy from Eguafo, who has difficulties in his family. But he always tries to solve the problem by himself and support the family additional. Their farm was not functioning well and the parents have problems to feed their children. He always went to the city to shine shoes and bring the money to the parents. Additional he had to go to school. He did that for many years with the help of the teachers. He studied good in the school and that helped him not to do much homework, so he had enough time to go and work. He always gave appreciation and thanks to his teachers.

I saw that this story touched the teachers in the ISB very much. Additional they performed a drama about elders in Eguafo. How they take care of the community, how to solve problems and how to organize them to do the community work. They have the youth, who voted themselves to help the children for homework and other activities.

All these dramas is to show that everything you do in this life, you need a support and help and then you can work as a team and achieve it. And this is where our motto came in: no stress, no panic, freedom but concentration. Music brings energy, energy brings happyness.

This year the teachers of ISB wanted to take part of the show. We worked with them for 90 minutes and you can see that they are looking forward to stand infront of their pupils to show them how much interest and talent they also have in music and dance. We tried to push them a bit harder and they did their best and we had a nice dance together. The pupils didn’t know about the teachers show. So it was a big surprise. It was thrilling and with our support they gave all.

Every year we the teachers performed, but only the grade 5 teachers and sometimes the director of the school as well. This year almost all the teachers took part in the workshop and the performance. It was so beautyful and we are looking forward to meet them next year.

This is unit work.

Benefit concert  with Aaron Bebe: August 2015 

A great performance was the concert with Ghanaian musicans and swiss musicians combined. We used bell, Kpanlogo drums, gome, seprewa, imbira, guitar, saxophon and bass. The atmosphere was very good, both from the musicians and the audience. The concert was a benefit for supporting Aarons son for his operation in Zürich. The mood of the little boy was making everybody additional happy. Coinsidently it was also his birthday. Chris got 5 years old. The concert was really dynamic and the music travelled with the audience. The whole concert hall sounded like we are in Ghana, but we were in Untersiggenthal in Switzerland. Additional there were balafon players using the Ghanian traditional xylofon who also increased the mood with their energetic playing.  In the end all of us came together and we had a very nice jam session.

 Just a few weeks later in the same month I was playing with another percussion group, known as kobolo drummers. It was an open air festival. As we arrived I saw a lot of people watching me with a big smile and friendlyness. I thought it was because I was wearing a Ghanain T-shirt. A group of young people came to me and they said we were watching you playing recently. I asked them where this was and they said it was in Untersiggenthal on the benefit concert. Not knowing most of the audience which watched the concert with Aaron, was at the festival. So I found out that this village we were playing belonged to Obersiggenthal. This time the style we were going to play was more traditional with different sorts of percussion instruments as Sogo, Kidi, Kaganu, Kpanlogo, Marakash, bell and Kroboto. It was a great audience which gave us a lot of energy and cheering. The concert kept going on good and good and good. Our energy kept on increasing.

Music brings energy, energy brings happyness and happyness can lead you inbetween two villages like Obersiggenthal and Untersiggenthal.

Experiences in music with children and youngsters

Music can travel with you and you will not realize with whom you are with.

Some traditional music from Africa is very difficult to understand. Specially combined with bell and marakash. Polyrhythms are giving the difficulties. Some of the pupils don't undestand and hear the connection inbetween the bell, marakash and the drum rhythms.
After working with them for one week, suddenly I can hear them trying to communicate with me on the drum. I immediatly adopt what they try to do and support them for them to understand it better.
All this communication is through rhythms, not with words.
Slowly they start to understand the way of communication without words and respond to it.
After the workshop we have a very wonderful show one Saturday and Sunday in May, which the audience was thrilled about.
A Ghanain musician was also in the audience, who then joined us on the stage. We did some 6/8 rhythms and combined it with bamboo flute. We also played 4/4 rhythms and sang some songs from all over the world towards it.
I do work in schools for many years now and I take part in music school camps for many times. This year I was very impressed about the camp.

For many years I am teaching at the music school Frick in Switzerland. Every year we do a different programm for the music school concerts all around the region. What I like from my pupils is, that they always have a confidence. They are from kindergarden till primary school.
They look so small if we have a concert with other students from the musicschool, but they always surprise everybody with their energy and their ability to concentrate. That gives me a possibility to change our programm any time. Or even create somthing new on the stage. They love to take part and you can see and feel that they also enjoy it. That gives me that possibilty to create new rhythms on the stage and the audience will not even recognize it. The pupils are flexible and have  a good understanding. To work with them is so easy going for me, so everytime we are on stage performing for the musicschool I introduce them as my music colleagues to the audience. I saw, that they like this very much and appreciate it. And you can see a big smile from their faces.
Some teachers who understand our African music and know how difficult it can be, they are surprised how these children can go far. Because I can do every rhythm with them on stage.
Our best concert this year was the opening of the Red Cross meeting in Aargau.

I am looking forward to meet them after holidays again and also the new pupils which are joining.
My motto will always be the same: no stress no panik - music gives energy - energy gives happyness.
Everytime I play music it gives me happyness. And I know it is the same to a lot of people.

African week

African week in Widen Primary school. 

The primary school Widen offered to all their Students workshops about Africa. The programm was about the Ashanti and Northern Kingdom of Ghana.

We begann the workshop with songs of Africa. There already they get prepared and dived into the African Art.

In this workshops we had three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon. Every day the student got more into the mood of the African week and the program get successful every day. On Friday we presented  a show to the entire village of Widen. 

These are one of the most wonderful workshops I used to give. 

Worldmusic in Icon club Zürich

The event company rumdum invited us to perform together with them in the Icon club in the heart of Zürich. The performance was a workshop with drumming, dancing and singing. The members of the rundum company are from all over the world and they are organizing traditional music from various countries in Africa, Europe, America, Asia and Australia. It was very interesting to work with them and they also brought a very good motivation to learn African music and dance. In the end they asked us if we can combine our African music with the DJ-work. A lot of songs were played, some familiar ones and some were unknown to us. But we used the skills of African Ghanaian traditional rhythms and melodies and made a nice jam session. Once more I saw, Ghana music, percussion and bell fits to every style.

We use the name wings of a dove percussion power to travel with you all over the continent.

Lets party together.

We are at yout service. 

African music and dance from Ghana and Westafrica: Music Gymnasium (art highschool) Münchenstein, Switzerland

During three days, we worked with three different levels of the Highschool of art in Münchenstein. The subject was African music, singing, dancing, drumming, rhythmicity and also concentration, coordination and communication in music and movements. 

We used elements from all over Africa, texts in Haussa language from Northern region of Nigeria, which is actually a used as an international trade language in Africa. Additional we used the language Ewe from Westafrica, which is also spoken in Togo, Ghana, Benin. Some songs were in Akan language from the Ashanti region of Ghana, Kumasi, and Fanti from the Central region of Ghana, Cape Coast, Elmina, Winneba. Many dances, rhythms and songs were new to the students. they put all their efforts in theses days and in the end we got a very good performance as a result. The audience was also taking part and we sang with them. The cheering and the applaus was immense. I always feel very happy in this school.

Invite our workshop in your school and let your students profit from the richness of African music, dance and rhythms with different percussion instruments.

A report of the integration project  „Mit Musik Brücken bauen“  

and the festival of meeting in Muri (AG) 15. June 2013 in Switzerland

The idea of the project developed in 2012 after the festival of meeting in Muri, where wings of a dove percussion power performed music, dance and storytelling from Westafrica.

The organisation Zäme Läbe Freiamt of the Kanton Aargau was happy about the performance and asked us to create a project for them, which will continue the  integration work with immigrants and refugees who live in the region. Through the idea of building bridges between  people of different nations we found the name „mit Musik Bücken bauen“. In the same time this was our Motto.

In August 2012 Power Sound Production began to develope the content of the project „mit Musik bücken bauen“.

The leading ideas were to work together with immigrants, refugees and swiss with respect, togetherness and improve our selfconfidence.  We planned to have a workshop every two weeks from September 2012 til June 2013. The aim was to present the results on the festival of meeting on 15. June 2013.

From then on we started to compose songs and write a theatre about the daily conflicts of living abroad, which is of course partly taken from our own experiences in Switzerland and other countries. In the mean while the organisation Zäme Läbe Freiamt was looking for participants.

This project was a very big challenge for Power Sound Production, because for many years we are using these ideas as a Motto in our workshops. It became a leading idea of our company.

Nadja Donkor, studied theaterscience and John Kofi Donkor as an artist, musician and actor, working together with different experiences. We merged the ideas to a theatre with the aim to send a message to the public about those difficult situations in daily life abroad.

One of the main subject is the communication. How do you communicate  when you just arrive in a foreign country with a foreign language? Making a lot of mistakes and misunderstandings have to be accepted and it will help you to continue your life. People will help you and speak to you correcting your mistakes. Through this many of them find you funny and you will find new friends.

As we read later on in the report of the Newspaper of the region (Aarau, Wohlen and Muri) about our perfromance on the festival 2013 „ Mit Musik Bücken bauen“, those ideas were successfully taken and understood by the public.

When we started the workshops, we had about 20-25 participants from all over the world .  Soon we realised that the founding of a choir with the immigrants and swiss was the best way to communicate and get to know eachother. We let the participants vote for the main workshop language.  It was chosen to be English and German.

We brought the idea that everybody can bring its texts or songs towards the motto of Unity and Togetherness. The songs appeared in many languages: Amharic, Tigrinnia, Lingala and French. Power Sound Production brought its songs in German, Akan and Haussa.

With the text of the songs we all felt happy to try another language and had a lot of fun with the pronounciation.

Our motto was always: music brings energy, energy brings happyness and happyness brings togetherness. And this is how we all feel, looking back on those many months of meetings in Muri for the workshops of the project „ Mit Music Bücken bauen“.

The main challenge was to present the results of the workshops on stage. All the participants were not professional artists. Some of them joined even the first time a music group in their life and stand the first time on stage to perform.

They really put a lot of efforts and enjoyed the performance. Additionally wings of a dove - percussion power was backing them and the dancers of the group were on fire.

To make the festival of meeting on the 15th June full and rich we engaged several professional music bands and dance groups:

Willi Hauenstein and the steelband Fassination, took us to the carribean islands. They opened the festival, drew the crowed in front of the stage and brought immediatly a good mood in to the tent.

Roger Konrad and Alpenfunkeln brought the swiss traditional music mixed with world music.  They surprised the audience with joddeling and alphorn playing. They used the whole tent as their stage and communicated with music. Sometimes you can only see the alphorn appearing in the tent to respond the joddeling and they all arrived in the end together on the stage. This was beautyful.

Afterwards the Hip Hop kids of Sivia  was taking the audience to a different music and show catagory. In the end they showed an African dance from Awa Dietemann. They impressed the audience so much and the audience responded and gave the heat to the performance.

The Extrem Bosnian Blues Band immediatly capture the audience and travelled with them a nice music journey. They really entertained the audience.

Valeria Eva came with ist special surprise dancers from Brasil. Valeria sang a lot of songs which are known to the public and they responded. The special dancers and their coulorful costumes heated the audience addtionally.

Christian Fotsch with ist Sassa group and a magnificant belly dancer took all of us to the Orient. They started with calm music which cooled the audience down and made them listen. In the end of their show a wonderful belly dance was performed.

It continued with the oriental touch with the belly dancers Dunyia’s dream. Each song was performed with its special costumes and dance. The audience was fascinated, watching and enjoying the performance.

After the festival we got a lot of compliments from the audience, newspaper, friends and people we didn’t know before.

We also got a nice feedback from the parents of the children who took part on our schoolworkshops we gave during the project „mit Musik Bücken bauen“.

 

Power Sound Production is looking successfully back on the project and the performances. We gathered a lot of new experiences and looking forward to work with people and organisations who are interested in music and art.

PowerSoundProduction, July 2013

With music we build bridges

PowerSoundProduction was travelling to Ghana and back to Switzerland.  With it‘s research we formed a theater together with „zäme läbe freiamt“. We call it “with music we build brigdes“.

We meet every second Tuesday since October 2012 with various migrant of the region. We formed up Unity songs, which gave ideas to all participants to create their own songs about unity. At the moment we got 6 to 7 songs in different languages and we are working on it.

PowerSoundProduction find it’s dynamic strength and energy, togetherness and harmony, creating rhythms towards all the songs. With music you don’t need language behind it. we are working in Harmony and it is wonderuful to see other cultures merging in one music.

Additional PowerSoundproduction provided a theatre about immigrant who arrived in Switzerland and had a lot of missunderstandings because of the language. We took the positiv side and made a nice story full of humor.

If you travel you may find yourself in thoses weared situations sometimes, when people don’t get what you want to say…or how can you let them understand you.

Your thoughts are still in your mothertongue and you just translate it to the other language...which mostly leads towards those missunderstandings.

Sometimes you can laugh and sometimes you don’t realize it for many months untill you come across it again. By then you understand the other culture better with it’s language. You go back and laugh again.

That is the idea PowerSoundProduction got to bring this festival up. It doesn‘t matter which language you speak, we can always missunderstand and understand eachother.

For us to make it in the positiv way, we put all into a commedy.

Come and watch it on our Festival on 15th June in Muri (AG) switzerland and it maybe reminds you of some of your mistakes which you are laughing about it til now.

At the moment we are looking for artists, who have interest in dance, music and theatre. To join us on 4th, 25th, 26th May and 8th,9th June in the aula Muri, Marktstrasse 5630 Muri and on the main rehearsal on 14th June.

The performance will be on 15th June on the festival.

Come and meet profession dance teachers and musicians, who will lead you to strengthen your talent and make you to perform in a show.

The teachers are Mike Larbi, Awa Dietemann and John Kofi Donkor.

It is free of charge – we are even paying your petrol and if you are arriving with a train we pay half of travellling costs. Food and drink will be provided. Come and realise your golden voice and your skills of movement and dance and your touch on the percussions. you can Register yourself till end of April 2013.

We are looking forward to meet you.

Yours

PowerSoundProduction
+41 41 788 05 77

Report of my visit in Ghana: Sound effects

Last year 2012 I went back home to Ghana in December. It was a very successfull and adventures arriving. Already on the next day I started my day with costruction work. The whole day I am driving a wheel truck. From far I can hear how people passed by and wisper: „Oh he just arrived from Europe and he is doing hard work like this.“ Some called me : „Rasta – this shows that you are not lazy in Europe!“

As I was working I walked around and found out, that the area was full of plastic bags and not clean. In the evening I said to myself: tomorrow morning I will organize my friends and we clean the area. I send people to get me a lot of brooms. In the morning at 6 c’clock the three of us started to clean the area. Immediatly friends who passed by and didn’t know that I am in town started to join in and helped while we are conversing. Within half an hour we were about twenty people. The assembly man saw us from far and as he got closer he said: „Hey Rasta – when did you arrive?“ He then also joined us. I used that possibility to extend the work further. By 11 o’clock around my area was so clean.

Suddely in the afternoon I saw my neighbours around me also began to clean up their area. An elderly woman passed by and said to me:“ You brought energy from Europe and shared it around. This is very good work. For me people could clean up, but often they are feeling shy to do it. Thinking the others are watching them and seeing them doing a dirty work. But I don’t call this a dirty work. This is a communion labor, which we have to do it and clean our area. But who will start it for someone to join in. The assembly man was often organizing people to clean the area. But suddenly they don’t want to do it. All is simple feeling shy that they are doing cleaning work. I am happy you are showing them, cleaning work doesn’t stand for one person. Every body is allowed to clean its area. Even ministers are joining in communion labor.“

This conversation I had with the old lady gave me a push. Every Saturday I am doing it and people are joining in.

This spread in the area. I was happy to walk around and see cleaners in the area.

I also often traced my roots and go to old places where I haven’t been for a long time. I saw a lot of development in Ghana. I went to an area, which quickly klicked my mind and I remembered a friend which I knew in Austria. 1995 he came to Ghana as a reporter for a festival sura za africa in Vienna. I lived then with my wife in Ghana. We got a letter from VIDC that somebody is coming from the ORF to make a report. His name is Dr. Bilek. So the time reach and we want to go to the airport to fetch him. As we arrived at the airport, we meet a lot of friends who are driving taxi. They all asked us if we need help. We gave then the name of Dr. Bilek to them on a piece of paper.

They all hold then a paper with this name on. The funny thing was, as he arrived he saw his name on about ten pieces of paper.

We didn’t know him personally. Suddenly Nadja was saying: „This is our man, he is starring around and look like an Austrian. Shall we ask him“ So Nadja went and asked him: „are you Robert Bilek?“ and I heared them then speking austrian German. Then I asked him: „But didn’t you see your name on the papers‘“ he replied: „Oh yes, but there are too many and I don’t know where to go.“ There I relized, that this was a mistake to involve so many people.

 As a Nima boy I didn’t know much about hotels. So me and Emmanuel stand there and decided to bring him to a hotel, so that we will accompany him in the next day for him to choose a good hotel. We just follow the names of the hotels and choose one. Emmanuel then brought him there and me and Nadja went home. Emmanuel came back and reported to us, that he got a good room for him. So in the morning the three of us went there and we saw him sitting in front of the hotel. I did only then a bit a research and found out that we brought him to the lions dungeon. I watched the face of Robert and said in my mind, sorry! I told him that he should pack his things and we go and find a better place. So we did.

I brought him to the next hotel and it was so quite in that area. We booked a room for him there. I went around again and made  a bit a research of the area and I found out that this place is a tigers dungeon, but they are all tamed. So I didn’t get panic and let him be there. Immeditaly we have to go and set appointments with musicians, such of Nana Ampedu, the leader of African Brothers band and also with panafrican orchestra, Nana Danso and others.

As we reached Nima to show him where I was born and grew up, I think Robert got interested in that place. Immediatly he started to do some recordings. Emmanuel and me were laughing behind, because we didn’t understand why he did those recordings. He recorded the voices of birds, cocks, chicken and sound of cooking pots – for me I didn’t understand why he was recording those things. I would have recorded music. But he knew what he wanted as a journalist.

I remember once we took him near to the 37 hospital and he was recording the bats on a tree. And me and Emmanuel couldn’t stopp laughing. Today I got to know, that those things are the sound effects. Now on this trip I was also chasing those sounds of Ghana.

As I went to the village Eguafo I got up early morning and did some recordings of the village sounds in the morning. Often the elders are asking me: „Eh – you don’t want to find something more insteresting?“ In my mind I just remember and said to myself, you don’t know I was just also in the same position, but now I can see the value of all this.

Dr. Bilek did a very nice report about Accra. I quite remember as I arrived in Austria. A lot of Ghanaian friends gave me complements, which I didn’t understand why

A friend took me to his home and played the report of Accra for me to hear. I went to the house and I heared a report on a tape and everything was so familiar to me, but it was in German. So I just didn’t say anything. Suddenly I heard a sound of Nima, the cocks and the cookingpots in the background and the Haussa language as a background sound. On and on I heared my voice, that is where I interfeared and asked my friend: „What is this?“ this is a report from Accra. The one who was doing this on the radio ORF is called Dr. Bilek. There I was remembering of course the funny recordings.

I was so interested and asked for a copy. Then I slowly became a bit famous through this report. I said to myself, that all the people didn’t know what Robert Bilek went through in Ghana. Thank God he is a journalist and he can stand a lot of things. In the whole world if you travel to a different country you meet good and bad. We let the good things overcome the bad ones. That was exactly what Dr. Bilek did. His wife  Karin came also to Ghana and the research became more and more interesting. I think the work of the husband had entered her. She was brave and powerful and there was nowhere she cannot enter. For me, I like people like Robert and his wife Karin.

I found out that he had a big position in the ORF, but you cannot see it from him. That’s why we could go anywhere we want in Accra.

Robert Bilek - I want to tell you – come back again! Do another report! Now all the areas we know are very much interesting than before. I know you came to Ghana several times, but we need another report.

John Kofi Donkor