View Recorded,Transcribedand Edited by Elizabeth Sayre

magazine of the philadelphia folklore project Volume 17:1/2 summer/fall 2003 ISSN 1075-0029 special issue: women’s music project ●● WWomen’somen’s musicmusic projectproject ProfilesProfiles ofof locallocal womenwomen musicians musicians ●● CookingCooking upup aa messmess ofof agit-propagit-prop EricEric JoselynJoselyn ●● WeWe shallshall notnot bebe movedmoved LoisLois FernandezFernandez ●● TTotalotal praisepraise ShawnShawn SaundersSaunders ●● andand moremore Works in progress is the magazine of the Philadelphia Folklore Project,a 17- year-old urban folklife organization.We inside work with people and communities in the Philadelphia area to build critical folk cultural knowledge,respect the 3 From the editor complex folk and traditional arts of our region,and challenge practices that 4 About the women’s music project diminish these local grassroots arts and By Toni Shapiro-Phim humanities.To learn more,please visit our website at www.folkloreproject.org The drum was my introduction to my life: or call 215.468.7871 8 Nana Korantemaa Ayeboafo philadelphia folklore By Elizabeth Sayre project staff This is not a dress rehearsal: NANIKHA Editor/PFP Director: Debora Kodish 12 PFP Assoc.Director: Toni Shapiro-Phim Copy editor: Jane Barry 16 Knocking on the spirit door Designer: IFE designs + Associates By Omomola Iyabunmi Printing: Garrison Printers Printed on recycled paper philadelphia folklore project board Lois Fernandez Germaine Ingram Mogauwane Mahloele Steve Rowland Ellen Somekawa Deborah Wei,Co-chair Mary Yee,Co-chair Xu Juan we gratefully acknowledge support from: ● National Endowment for the Arts ● The Rockefeller Foundation ● The William Penn Foundation ● The Pew Charitable Trusts ● Pennsylvania Council on the Arts ● The Humanities-in-the Arts Inititative, administered by The Pennsylvania Humanities Council, and funded principally by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts ● Independence Foundation Cooking up a mess ● Pennsylvania Historical and Museum 18 Commission of agit-prop ● Dance Advance, a grant program funded by By Eric Joselyn The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by Drexel University ● Philadelphia Music Project, a grant program 24 Walking on solid ground funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and By Shuyuan Li administered by the University of the Arts ● Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, a grant program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts 28 We shall not be moved and administered by the University of the Arts Front cover: By Lois Fernandez ● The Puffin Foundation Omomola ● The Philadelphia Cultural Fund Iyabunmi and the Total praise: preserving the ● Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative, Women’s Sekere 30 a grant program funded by The Pew Ensemble at hymn-singing tradition Charitable Trusts and administered by Africamericas By Shawn P. Saunders Drexel University Festival. Photo: ● Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation Thomas B. Morton ● The Philadelphia Folksong Society ● The Shefa Fund 32 Está en mis venas: ● and individual Philadelphia Folklore Project Three Latina musicians members By Elizabeth Sayre thank you to all from the editor his began as a special version of community music- American neighborhood. She issue about women making, and culture-making, in asks, "What is affordable and music, but the which they are active housing?" Assuredly not the government's mad participants. Sometimes, women $350,000 townhouses that are rush to war are fortunate: recognized and planned for her neighborhood, T intervened.World named as artists by other artists from which long-time residents events have been impossible to of stature. On her very first trip are nearly totally displaced. ignore, especially as so many to Africa, Nana Korantemaa Folk arts have often served artists among our circles have heard her name called out by a as vehicles for rendering direct experience of the real venerable healer— a woman community experience. The costs of war and violence, at she had never met before.The tendency is to imagine that home and abroad.These past experience was stunning and community is a synonym for months PFP friends, staff, board, opened a spiritual and musical ethnicity,line of descent, or and artists engaged in various life path for Nana.The three physical space. But many of us efforts to speak out against the young Latina musicians (including some of the women war on Iraq. (See our anti-war described here represent, in this issue) have complex and resolution on our website). similarly,new generations mixed lines of descent, are Now we offer this issue as a seeking ways to reclaim and long time dis-placed, but are reminder that folk and reimagine what tradition and united by our actions, our traditional arts are long-time culture can offer. collective sense of outrage at resources for struggle, as well as Li Shuyuan comes from a inequity,and by our desire to forceful evidences that there long line of Beijing opera artists. build a community based on have been, and continue to be, This tradition did not guarantee justice and equity.It is this other kinds of social that her life would be easy vision of a fundamentally just arrangements than those in (although she says little of her society towards which artist which we find ourselves here own hardships.) She has much and activist Eric Joselyn works. and now. to say about how she has come No less than any of the other to value the discipline and folk art traditions profiled here, • • • training that she gained from his is art in service of Some of the women's Beijing opera. She reminds us: community.When thousands of musical traditions described in there are no short cuts, in people wearing his "No Stadium these pages have served as learning a traditional art or in in Chinatown" t-shirts filled the explicit tools for naming and life. Few other women profiled streets in demonstrations advancing peoples' political in these pages were, like Ms. Li, against the city's plans a few struggles. NANIKHA founder born into an artistic lineage that years back, the vivid display Nia Bey Al-Rasul pieced together is clear and present for them. amplified the message.And the words of the “Nkosi Sikelei” This modest issue offers a even more: the community in the early 1980s, determined small sampling of women’s first- could see itself, its power and to sing the South African person accounts of how diverse its strength. national anthem so that others (and often minority) artistic The folk art traditions in the African American lineages have been sustained, described here have cultural community could hear the song threatened, and recovered in equity,community survival, and and understand the issues.The widely varied times and places. rights of expression at their group NANIKHA comes out of Here are reminders of how heart.That these issues are an impulse to stand with others, music can be more than a chronically overlooked and and to sing and be heard. commodity,and far more than underestimated, often pushed This impulse—indeed, this mere entertainment. For all of aside by more “pressing”matters right to a kind of meaningful these women, music and art (as is often the case with freedom of expression— is not have been fundamental lifelines. “women's issues”) should be no something that we all possess. surprise. But in these times, we Nor is it something that comes would do well to pay attention easily,for more reasons than • • • to the fate and state of both arts there is space here to discuss. In This issue is rounded out and people who (to borrow most cases, the stories that with two articles that remind us Eric’s words) make available follow chronicle ways that of ongoing struggles for equity such useable, inclusionary, women have seized and justice in Philadelphia. Lois accessible, and significant opportunities, dedicated Fernandez responds to alternatives. themselves to learning, speculators' plans to further committed themselves to a gentrify an historically African — Debora Kodish 3 About the program ✱ Women’s Music pfp Project by toni shapiro-phim 4 of her own role in maintaining a musical form with an important history and a fragile future, and having arrived at a critical juncture in that historical trajectory,would benefit from the individual, collaborative, and public aspects of such a project. We also looked at this as a program that would enrich Philadelphia’s cultural community through public performances and through the development of youth ensembles in musical forms that are for the most part unknown or unrecognized by the local public. Leendavy Koung plays a number of Cambodian musical instruments, including the khim (dulcimer), takhe (zither), roneat (xylophone), and others. She also performs different types of Cambodian traditional music—for weddings, folk and classical dance, ayaii (rhymed and improvised repartee singing), and folk and popular songs. She Women’s Music comes from an extraordinary Project artists. musical family: surviving the Pol Other page: Nana Pot regime in Cambodia (under Korantemaa Ayeboafo, Leendavy whom close to a quarter of the Koung and Susan population perished), she and her Watts. This page: siblings carried the musical Leendavy Koung. instruments her father had crafted Photos: Thomas B. Morton, 2003 (and taught them to play) through the jungles on a dangerous journey across Cambodia’s border to refugee camps in Thailand. From there, they eventually made their way— instruments in hand— to Philadelphia. It is still somewhat uncommon for women The Philadelphia Folklore these community connections, to play certain of the instruments Project’s “Women’s Music Project” along with the specific artistic and kinds of music Leendavy is a first-time-ever initiative that traditions and these particular does; nonetheless she has been will draw to a close this summer. practitioners, that the Women’s performing since 1978, organizing For two years the Project has Music Project has supported youth programs since 1983, and focused on the art and artistry of through grant development and coordinating arts education three accomplished local programming.

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