GHANA REPRESENTS AT AN INTERNATIONAL AFRICAN DANCE AND MUSIC CONFERENCE TODAY IN NEW YORK

 GHANA REPRESENTS AT AN INTERNATIONAL AFRICAN DANCE AND MUSIC CONFERENCE TODAY IN NEW YORK

Prekese Ghanamedia
December 31, 1969  2 min read 
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The agenda:   Introductions Statement of challenge/problem African music and dance in academy PAPAA statement of purpose Discussion: national-international conference Expected outcomes: conference, core curriculum, certification process Tasks Assignments Questions Announcements Next meeting       Statement of Challenge/Problem    The passage of the Civil Rights Act of the sixties, brought courses on Black and Minority Studies into the curriculum of colleges and universities throughout the nation. The Civil Rights Act commanded the compliance of all schools or the loss of federal funding. This forced department chairs scurrying to find courses they could offer in order to be in compliance with the federal dictate.   African dance was a popular request as a new course of study to be included in the curriculum. As a junior, the chairman asked me, and I suggested African dance and music. Not much was known about African dance, but my work in dance on the campus and my background fully supported my suggestion.   African dance in Africa is an oral tradition that is inseparable from its music. As an oral tradition, African dance is not supported by written documentation. Any course in academia that is not supported by written documentation is not considered a valid course because it is not subject to standardized testing. Academia holds the position that African dance and music are too young and disorganized to be valid courses in the curriculum. Without written documentation these courses would wallow in the doldrums of an oral art form that has no resolution in academia, as they cannot be assessed in the realm of traditional testing with the tools available to academia.   The resolution to this situation was the application of my system (Greenotation) to the music of Africa and (Labanotation) to the accompanying dance movements. Without these systems of notation, African music and dance would flounder in academia and never be fully considered valid courses. It has been more than 43 years and it now time that this dilemma is taken seriously. 

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