Help Preserve Traditional Dance and Music in Mali

Greetings Kono Gnaga Supporters! 

The first part of 2021 has been an interesting mix of shut downs and "life as normal" here in Mali.  As COVID continues to challenge so much of daily life and activities, Solo and his team of artists have been able to continue to offer weekly virtual dance classes direct from Mali as well as virtual workshops to schools in Eastern North Carolina.   They have given  almost 15 "live from Mali" workshops to elementary schools with children joining from their classrooms as well as connecting in from home.  This has been a fantastic opportunity provided with support from Atlantic Dance Theatre in North Carolina and  possibly one of the positive outcomes of this pandemic.  The students and teachers have been so enthusiastic and the workshops always end with a long Q&A session that allows for questions that range from "what kind of food do you eat" to "do you have Komodo Dragons in Mali?"

Over the past couple of months we have also been very busy reasearching grant opportunities as well as connecting with organizations such as UNESCO and the ICCROM "International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property" to explore potential future partnerships.  We are also looking for financial support to use green construction to build our dance and music center - see the photo below of the design using traditional banco (mud) bricks.  There are lots of resources and sites urging this, but finding the funding is proving challenging.  Please reach out if you have any ideas!    As we know the construction of this larger center is further off in our future,  we used personal funds to build an initial outdoor space that can be used for workshops, rehearsals, and other events that will be located next to the larger center.  We are so excited at the outcome particularly the amazing mural work done by local artist Drissa Konate.  There is still a lot of work to be done to make this a fully functioning space, but we are on our way.  We hope some of you will consider coming to visit and help us to launch the use of the site!   

We also wanted to share the sad news that we unfortunately lost one of our Kono Gnaga artists  - Nana Diarra.  She performed with Solo's group Sira Kora and participated in our Kono Gnaga events.   You can see her in the center of the picture above.  She was a young woman that was a fierce dancer and dedicated to traditional dance.  She unfortunately passed away due to complications from childbirth which is all too common in places like Mali with substandard health care.  We are currently braintstorming ways to honor her as we desperately need to encourage more young women to take up the study of dance.  

We have attached a link to our final video/report from the Kono Gnaga school festival.  This contains great clips of the students dancing so that you can experience what the festival was like.  the link is here: Kono Gnaga's 2020 School Festival.  Plans are already in place for a festival again for the 2021-2022 school year to take place in January 2022. 

Our plans are ambitious so donations are always welcome!  We want to thank each of you for your continued support!

 Solo Sana, Zyck Baggett, and the Kono Gnaga Team

Links:

• Video on the 2020 Kono Gnaga Festival