50 Music Scholars Convene in Zanzibar

FIFTY international music scholars will be in Zanzibar from tomorrow to discuss the music o
f Africa. The four-day discussion will take place at the Dhow Countries Music Academy's (DCMA) premises situated within the Stone Town.

According to Academic Director, Professor Mitchel Strumpf, this will be the largest gathering of international scholars in the study of the continent's music ever to be held in the country.

"This conference will bring together scholars from Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Germany, the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom and France, to team up with their local counterparts and hear 40 academic papers on studies of African music," he said yesterday.

He also confirmed that the meeting, entitled "Memory, Power and Knowledge in African Music and Beyond," has been organized by the World Music Programme of Hildesheim University, in Germany.

The Volkswagen Corporation is sponsoring this conference. Two major keynote presentations will be part of the conference, of which one piece entitled "Song, Memory, Power and the South African Archive", will be presented by Professor Christopher Ballantine of the University of Kwa- Zulu-Natal in South Africa.

The other keynote presentation will be by Professor Philip Bohlman of the University of Chicago in the USA. It comes under the title "Africa Aporio: Ethnomusicology in Search of Lost Time".

Both scholars have papers that are widely published and are well noted in the field of Ethnomusicology. It is for this reason that the DCMA "is honoured to have been selected to host this extremely high-level gathering" where scholars in the field of African music can meet.

The DCMA Taarab-Kidumbak Ensemble, who have just returned from the International Africa Festival in German