The project to invite Billy Nankouma Konate to work with Hooked on Drums' ever-growing body of participants has been long in the making, with concentrated efforts in the past year of programming in particular . Concrete planning began in 2006, in Loshausen, Germany--at a performance by Billy Nankouma's band, Konatekounde and Hamana Tolon. In October, 2008, once funding had come through, we stepped up our efforts to provide as much pre-project training to as many Chicago youth as possible, and by February 2009, we had a base of 300 students to select from for participation in the week-long intensive drum camp with Billy Nankouma Konate at the Hooked on Drums studio. For weeks and months, Jim and Lilian have been busily preparing for the Visitor's arrival!
In a broader sense, the project has been in the works ever since Hooked on Drums' founder Lilian Friedberg first met Billy Nankouma Konate in Conakry in 1988.
Since 1994, Friedberg's professional youth performing ensembles (Nankouma Drum Corps) have been named after Billy Nankouma Konate, and the vision of Hooked on Drums has always been geared toward collaboration with this artist. With generous support from the WalMart Corporation, the MacArthur Foundation, parent and community volunteers, local restaurants and businesses (Italian Fiesta Pizzeria, Valois Cafeteria, Dunkin' Donuts, Hyde Park Produce and Piccollo Mondo), we were able to realize one of our biggest and most long-standing goals!
The project was tremendously successful and culminated in a spectacular performance at Kennicott Park, followed by a reception in the Hooked on Drums Studio on April 9, 2009.
In the days immediately preceding the Visitor's arrival, dunduns were tugged at and tweaked
The Visitor blew into town on a frosty April day--and was picked up in "grand style" by a team of Hooked on Drums VIPs, who insisted that the first stop be a trip to Obama's house, followed later by a flat tire which--as any visitor to West Africa knows, is a feature of any bona fide drum camp, not a bug!
Finally, the Visitor had arrived
And joined us for a 2-hour session with our advanced group, the Nankouma New Recruits
Followed by a reception, with traditional soul food lovingly prepared by Miss Bev (fried chicken, seafood gumbo, cornbread, greens, veggie tray, mac n cheese!)
We are eternally grateful to all the volunteers who helped make this happen: especially parent Mina Nakano, who was in the studio all day, every day, and Miss Miller, who came in daily for KP duty, MaryBeth, Jake Towers, the staff at Kennicott Park and all the parents who came out for Wednesday night rehearsal and the concert. Kyoji Nakano captured the whole performance on film and video, and without his efforts, there would have been no Easter eggs in our Youtube basket. We could NOT have done this without them! Inike!
Mina and Miss Miller:
Mina and MB:
Kyoji and Billy:
Mina and Kyoji:
The kids kept telling me I was crazy to set up a 4-day, all day (9-5) drum camp: with extra rehearsals til 8 PM on Tuesday and Wednesday. I told them, "If you haven't yet figured out that I'm out of my mind, then you haven't been paying attention--the motto for this camp is Drum.Till.You.Drop. And a few of them did.....
But no one dropped out--instead, they got up again....and the beat went on...
and on....
and on
Billy just kept saying, "These kids are hardcore!"
It's not like we didn't feed them....
At some of Obama's favorite restaurants:
And at the park
Or give them some time to socialize
time for R and R
(and French lessons!)
And hanging out on the couch
Or watching videos...
Or creating a completely new hangout in the studio from what was originally designed to be a purely decorative corner:
Guess I should have figured those pillows would come in handy for something someday!
Meanwhile, costumes were being sown by tailors at Djenne Collection--specially made for the Nankouma Konate events. We knew the fabric had to exist--Billy looked for it in Guinea shortly before he came to Chicago, but didn't find it. But there it was--just down the way on 95th St.
Didn't look like much on these front and rear view shots in my kitchen, but I knew they would be a hit!
Parent volunteer Mina Nakano--mother of all trades!--fitted the kids and managed costumes throughout the dress rehearsal and performance:
Parents began arriving, and excitement mounted....
Till the next day
when, after a little warm up in the studio
The show went on!
If you missed us live, you can always catch us on YouTube: the concert has been posted in its entirety (9 clips). We are so proud of our youth participants, their parents, our volunteers and community, and are extremely grateful to the growing number of sponsors helping to make all this possible with their generous support, in particular The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and WalMart Corporation.
It's been an exciting year in the new studio space at Kennicott Park. It's only when you sit down to record the year in pictures that you realize just how much has happened in that space--it's hard to know where to begin.
Maybe the best place is where you left off: with the toddlers and the Nankouma Drum Core.
It is an incredible instructional space, one that has grown and changed to suit programming needs over the last year. It's fantastic for drumming, as the toddlers can certainly attest.
But they also know it's a great place for a pillow fight!
I was hesitant about taking on the toddlers: there's a reason Hooked on Drums does not accept children under 6 years of age in our programs. Kids that age do have the capacity to absorb the rhythms--what they often don't have is the motor coordination to execute the technical aspects of the musicianship.
What is more, I am not trained in early childhood education, but I've found ways to get through to the "munchkins" all the same--and many of them are now actually beginning to produce intelligible songs on the instruments. Mostly, though, when it comes to the toddlers, I'm in it for the "love"--and there's plenty of that to go around.
It makes more sense to start them when they're between 6, 7 and older--here some shots from our Saturday open classes with that age group, taken by parent volunteer Kyoji Nakano:
The Nankouma Drum Core
Our advanced performing group, the Nankouma Drum Core, continued its rehearsals and performances, kicking off the year with a performance at a national conference on community organizing, "Getting It Done" at the UIC Forum in downtown Chicago, sponsored by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation.
Some members of the Core, native Chicagoans, had never been downtown before, and that's not unusual in these parts, really--providing our youth with exposure to many different environments outside their south side neighborhoods is a major aspect of our work. It was like taking them to Paris!
The group performed and was well-received by an enthusiastic audience of about 800 community organizers from around the country.
In preparation for the conference, Nankouma hunkered down in the studio for a "drum till you drop" day--complete with pizza party and video screenings.
In March, Hooked on Drums received a generous award from the Chicago Community Trust's Young Leaders Fund, and some of our new recruits from the program at Harvard Elementary gave their first public performance in the luxurious Ivy Room at Tree Studios the (Brochure in PDF).
With the generous support of LISC/QCDC, and Harvard School of Excellence, we were able to offer summer programs at the studio:
Our sponsors were very understanding about our need to provide door-to-door transportation to students, most of whom would not be able to get to us without it. Many of the neighborhoods we serve are plagued with gun violence: last year alone, nearly 30 CPS students lost their lives to it! And public transportation is often not an option for kids who must pass through several gang territories to get to us. We're glad there are services like ThrePar Transportation to meet this need--and we feel good about being able to support local family-owned businesses! We were able to "bus" kids in from all over the city.
Thanks again to LISC, Harvard School of Excellence and CCT! They say the fist bump is the new high five!
A 2008 "year in pictures" would not be complete without some pics of "zoom zoom", the "company car" purchased with generous support from Board President Jim Banks (who tapped into his 401K to make a substantial down payment)--another way we have improved our ability to meet the transportation needs of our clients.
The seating capacity of the Mazda is: 15 doundouns, two kids, and Miss Lilian--as we found out when we offered programs for 15 kids at McCorkle Elementary this summer (our interns, Mike and Marquis, helped out with the program):
While we were busy teaching kids at McCorkle, Mr. Banks held classes at the studio for a great group of students from the Homewood Flossmoor Park District, assisted by another of our interns, also named Mike.
The highlight of the summer was our participation in the Bud Billiken Parade, made possible by the generous support of our sponsors at the Chicago Community Trust (Young Leaders Fund), Local Initiatives Support Corporation/Quad Communities Development Corporation, the Open Meadows Foundation, and of course, parents, kids and the volunteers who came out to support us! We had 9 drummers on a 30-foot float...
For me, as the organization's founder, it was the fulfillment of a 15-year dream: I'd first learned of the Bud Billiken Parade from a television broadcast in Minneapolis 15 years ago, and said to myself, "That is something I have got to do!" What I couldn't have imagined was that, by the time it happened, there would be someone in every block of the crowds lining MLK Drive screaming "Miss Lilian". It's great to have finally found a community that really makes you believe "there's no place like home."
That more than made up for the fact that in the end it....well....sort of rained on our parade! What's a little early August downpour in the greater scheme of things?
Apropos rain: In June, we were thrilled to have been invited to perform at Little Black Pearl's annual "PearlFest." We were scheduled to go on stage around 2 PM, and had the kids meet at the studio about 2 hours prior to get warmed up and get into costumes. But then the rain came. Torrential downpours prevented the outdoor event from proceeding as planned. With 8 kids hopped up on sugar and the thrill of performing locked up in a 30 X 30 room for 5 hours on a Sunday afternoon...I consider it testimony to my abilities as an educator that everyone came out of it alive. (Thank goodness Miss B had some leftovers from an earlier event, and we were able to distract the kids with spaghetti about 2 hours into the ordeal!)
In the end, the kids did a fantastic job and the performance was spectacular:
In keeping with our aim to provide participants in our programs with as much exposure to different environments as possible--especially university and other professional settings--we hit the road at the start of the school year and took two of our most accomplished apprentices to perform with us at Beloit College. We didn't get any shots of the performance, but took time out for some "R and R" at the Turtle Island Park in Beloit.
A great time was had by all, and when it was over: Marquis said, "Now I know for sure, I am going to college!" Guess we must be doing something right! The boys are too young to remember Gilligan's Island, so they don't quite get what we mean when we refer to these two as "the Skipper and Gilligan". But, seeing them in action, anyone's who old enough to know cannot help but recognize the routine!
For the second consecutive year, Nankouma was invited to perform on the Global Beats stage at the annual "Adventures in Travel" expo in Rosemount. This year, they were asked to help event organizers "drum up business"--on what happened to be the snowiest day of the year!
When asked by reporters at the Chicago Tribune and Hyde Park Herald what their favorite activity had been, our performers ultimately agreed: playing in the CBS2 studio for that Saturday morning newscast.
We still haven't had time to post the clip on Youtube, but you can view it here at the CBS2 site. We haven't posted clips from the concert yet, either, but here are some photos from the performance:
What kind of adventure would be complete without a little camel riding, scuba diving and treasure hunting?
Despite the fact that we already had what is probably the largest non-retail collection of doundoun drums in the country:
contracts for off-site programming in schools required that we purchase an additional 15 of them. We ordered them from a drummaker in Africa, and headed out to O'Hare over Thanksgiving weekend to retrieve them from customs. The boys helped us tune them in the studio.
We're still short a few bells, but were blessed with a tremendous gift of 3 sets of spectacularly crafted bells from our good friend and long-time supporter, Alpha at Alpha Rhythm Roots in Toronto!
The drums are temporarily housed at Chicago International Charter School, where we're offering an after school program to 15 incredibly enthusiastic kids. Nankouma came out to help us show them what the drums are supposed to sound like:
They were on their way back from a paid performance at a suburban elementary school in Roselle, IL anyway:
When we stopped at a real Mexican restaurant in Logan Square, Amari assured us that he could not stand avocados and certainly would never eat guacamole: "Ewwwww!":
But he sure enjoyed the nachos!
Meanwhile, back in Bronzeville, we've got about 200 kids giving 25 of our other drums a good workout!
Michael came in one day to help us out!
And at the studio, kids from NKO are preparing to perform for their annual end-of-year creativity festival.
After we lost funding for our program at Harvard School of Excellence in Englewood, a lot of the kids from that program expressed interest in continuing. So we went out in search of funding for a new program just for them at the studio. By the time we finally found the funding (our sincerest thanks go out to WalMart Corporation!), all but one of them had lost interest. So we teamed up with folks at Teamwork Englewood to recruit new participants. Jim Banks is teaching the class, and our interns Mike and Marquis--two of the original participants in the program at Harvard--have Saturday jobs assisting him. We are so proud of them.
The Skipper and Gilligan recently came through for us in a big way when one of our performers had to cancel at the last minute for a Black History Month performance at Namaste Charter School. The Malinke rhythms consist of at least 5 drum voices--three of which are played on the bass drums (doundounba, sangban and kenkeni)--so the minimum number needed to perform is 4: 3 bass drums and one djembe. For logistical reasons, we only had this minimum number lined up for the performance at Namaste. Even as we pulled up to the school and started unloading drums, I had no clue about what we were going to do.
Standing on stage, I said to Marquis: "OK, here's what's going to happen: you're going to play the drums stacked: sangban and doundounba." It's not entirely unheard of--people do it all the time, but mostly with a little practice! I've never seen anyone manage to pick it up on the spot. But Marquis did! And performed spectacularly for an audience of about 300 kids.
(OK, so it took a little bribery to get him to do it, but still!)
is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit corporation deeply committed to using African music as a vehicle for fostering creativity, curiosity, discipline, self-confidence and well-being in youth—above all, inner-city, at risk youth of diverse ethnic backgrounds.
For more information, please visit our website at Hooked on Drums and our sister site at Chicago Djembe Project.
Please visit our YouTube page for more video footage of our kids, our teachers and the Chicago Djembe Project performing.
