The School of Music Ethnomusicology program presents an evening of high-energy traditional and contemporary Wagogo music and dance from Tanzania, featuring visiting artist Kedmon Mapana and his students. These musical selections have rarely been performed outside the Dodoma region of Tanzania.

ARTIST BIO

Kedmon Mapana

Kedmon Mapana is an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Department of Fine and Performing Arts. He earned a Music Education Certificate from Butimba Teachers College, a BA in Music and a Master of Arts in Music from the University of Dar es Salaam. Currently, he is a doctoral student at Seattle Pacific University in curriculum and instruction with emphasis on music education and ethnomusicology.

He is a dancer, singer, drummer, Gogo flute, kayamba and ilimba player, music performance organizer, choir director, scholar and community music teacher.

From May to July 2006 and April to June 2007, Kedmon taught choral and dance workshops in schools and Lutheran churches in Sweden and Denmark. He is featured in a 15-minute documentary filmed in Denmark in 2008, “Kedmon Mapana in Denmark” (Milbo Media: MM-DOK 44005008). In July 2008, he led a group to Poland to perform and give workshops at a cultural festival in Wroclaw. He has presented invited academic papers at Africa University in Zimbabwe, University of Washington School of Music, and University of Dar es Salaam’s Ethnomusicology Symposium. He has published an article on his thesis research in the African Cultural Studies Journal (19(1) June, 2007:81-93). He was one of the Panelists for Teleconference for the Society of Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting 2008 at Wesleyan University-Africa. He has organized three large Wagogo cultural festivals (13 Feb, 2005, 8 Feb, 2009 and 17 July, 2010) featuring Gogo music and musicians from a number of villages in his home area: Chamwino Village in the Dodoma Region of Central Tanzania.