The UCLA Ethnomusicology Graduate Student Organization (EGSO) and
The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Department of Ethnomusicology

present

Yorùbá BÀTÁ WORKSHOP
WITH CHIEF RABIU AYANDOKUN

Monday, November 19, 2012
7-9pm
1659 Schoenberg Music Bldg
(Gamelan Room)

All musical levels welcome!

By RSVP only
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Drums will be provided

BÀTÁ is a Yorùbá drumming tradition of southwestern Nigeria that is more than five hundred years old. Musically recreating the sounds of Yorùbá speech, bàtá drumming keeps alive a body of oral literature that dates back centuries. With roots in a system of orìsà (deity) devotion and ancestor veneration that predates the introduction of Islam and Christianity to Yorùbáland, the bàtá’s branches extend from West Africa to the Americas, where its legacy is carried on in the sacred music of Cuban Santería and Brazilian Candomblé. This participatory workshop offers students of all musical levels the rare opportunity to learn traditional Nigerian bàtá repertoire from a musician whose family has practiced the art for generations. Chief Ayandokun will introduce the different drums of the bàtá family, demonstrate how the drum “talks,” and teach students how to put together a group performance.

CHIEF RABIU AYANDOKUN belongs to a renowned family of Yorùbá bàtá drummers and masqueraders from the town of Erin-Osun, Nigeria. Having started training at the age of six under the tutelage of his father, Ayandokun has mastered a range of percussion instruments, including bàtá, dùndún, gángán, and conga drums. In addition to maintaining the sacred repertoire of the orìsà (deities), Ayandokun has performed and recorded with some of Nigeria’s top traditional and popular music artists. His first international recognition came through the respected scholar Ulli Beier, who invited him to Europe in 1987. Ayandokun is now one of the foremost percussionists in Nigeria and continues to collaborate with artists and scholars from all over the world.

Free admission

Funded by Campus Programs Committee of the Program Activities Board
www.studentgroups.ucla.edu/egso