- country:Canada
- region:East Africa
- style(s):Afro
- label:not signed
- type:Band, Composer/Songwriter
- instrumentation:instrumental, vocal, a cappella, percussion, visual, string, singer songwriter, lute, guitar
- artist posted by:Batuki Music Society
Line up
- Aron Nitunga (Guitar, vocals)
- Daniel Nebiat (Krar, vocals)
- Donne Roberts (Guitar, vocals)
- Ebenezer Agyekum (Bass guitar)
- Kofi Ackah (Percussion, vocals)
- Kooshin (Kaban, vocals)
- Nadine McNulty (Music Director)
- Nicolas Simbananiye (Vocals)
- Sadio Sissokho (Kora, tama, djembe, vocals)
- Tichaona Maredza (Nyunga-Nyunga mbira, Marimba, hosho, vocals)
Links
Okavango African Orchestra - 12 instruments, 10 languages, 7 countries...one special concert.
Okavango African Orchestra is an ambitious musical project that could happen only in a great multicultural city like Toronto. Batuki Music Society Artistic Director Nadine McNulty has assembled a cast of nine accomplished African-born musicians who now live in Toronto and Montreal: Daniel Nebiat (Eritrea), Donne Roberts (Madagascar), Tichaona Maredza (Zimbabwe), Kooshin (Somalia), Sadio Sissokho (Senegal), Kofi Ackah (Ghana), Ebenezer Agyekum (Ghana), Aron Nitunga (Burundi), Nicolas Simbananiye (Burundi).
The orchestra takes its name from the Okavango Delta, a basin in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, where many different animal species come together to feed and find water. Predators and prey are forced to coexist and share the meager resources because of the harsh environment around them. Similarly, Okavango: An African Orchestra brings together the traditional music and instruments of several major African cultures that historically have had little or no interaction. The musicians of Okavango have created a common meeting place for these disparate cultures, and a new musical language that harmonizes their different tuning systems, rhythms, and timbres. The musicians and instruments of Okavango represent a continuum of traditions and cultures from time immemorial to the present day. The multicultural spirit of modern-day Canada bridges ancient African solitudes.
The origin of this orchestra also comes from a desire to create something that had never been attempted before. Okavango is the coming together of old and new using traditional instruments to revive these traditions and bring them to light by mixing with modern instruments as a way of re-introducing them to a new audience. Making these instruments relevant in today's African music.
The music is a derivative of the instruments themselves and players in the orchestra. Sounds like Somali jazz, Tigrinya folk music, Malagasy ballads and salegy, hybrid sounds of Shona folk and popular music of Zimbabwe, Griot music of West Africa and oral history, Ghanaian highlife elements... The orchestra is a reflection of the varied music that originates from the African continent, specifically the local traditional instruments that are actually the catalyst for forming the orchestra. The music is not static, it's an experimentation with the traditional and modern instruments trying to find a medium where they all co-exist on a single stage. Okavango is continuously evolving through its' introduction of other traditional instruments found throughout Africa.
Over the autumn and winter of 2012, the reassembled Okavango African Orchestra revisited the site of its triumphant debut, the Canadian Broadcasting Centre where it conquered a full house at Glenn Gould Studio the previous year during Black History month. Its members, returning and new, hunkered down at CBC's 'Studio 211' for the recording of the group's debut album of ten original songs due for release in 2014.
Batuki Music Society will be featuring the Okavango African Orchestra at Mundial Montreal on November 22, 2013 for an exciting showcase and look ahead on its continuing journey to an "Africa without borders... before the borders were created".
For more info:
nadine@batukimusic.com
www.batukimusic.com