The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Performances this Saturday, March 1 and March 7
By Dawne Belloise
The Kissidugu Foundation, founded by world renown artist and educator Fara Tolno, is a nonprofit that facilitates cultural art programs and events to provide music and movement education to all ages and abilities. Fara has played with artists such as BB King, Neil Young, Burning Spear, Mamady Keita, Otis Taylor, Joe Cocker, Youssou N’Dour, Salif Keita and more. The name Kissidugu translates to “a safe place.” Five years ago, the Foundation teamed up with Crested Butte Community Schools (CBCS) to initiate a project-based curriculum to provide rich cultural exchange offerings, and support sustainable education, health and wellness in rural Guinea, West Africa. CB kids experience cultural exchanges and ideas with students on the Guinea campus through projects and writing. The programs offer music and dance education that would not be available otherwise.
There are also visiting artists who work with the high school jazz band, teach a residency at Western Colorado University and work at both libraries and art centers within the Gunnison Valley. These artists also travel to surrounding mountain communities to teach drum and dance classes. For the past three years, there’s been a cultural art camp for kids during their February break. The classes engage the local kids in drum, dance, songs, games, storytelling and artwork. The kids then participate as the opening act for the larger theater show that takes place at the CB Center for the Arts, this year on March 7 at 7 p.m.
Angie Carroll, co-founder of Kissidugu and director of Colorado Programs, Events and Cultural Arts Education explains, “The kids will open the show and then we bring visiting African artists from Guinea and surrounding Colorado areas. From Guinea, we bring a troupe of acrobats, singers, dancers and musicians.”
The show also incorporates local musicians like Chris Penfield and Casey Falter, along with local dancers. The show culminates the five-week long program in the Gunnison Valley. New this year is a musicians’ performance class, taught by Fara, who is teaching a six-class course, placing a traditional African rhythm onto a variety of instruments. He created a musical arrangement by taking traditional African rhythm and translating it to western music instrumentation.
This Saturday, March 1, there’s a fundraiser performance at the CBMR base area. The project is part of the Epic Promise that will match $1,500 of funds raised. There’ll be live music, dance performances and an information booth for the Kissidugu Foundation. A free mini class for West African dance starts around noon and goes until 3 p.m. with the big performance of dance, drumming, songs and multiple musicians in Butte 66 during happy hour 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. And it’s all free.
Fara has been coming to the Gunnison Valley for two decades. Angie tells that Fara is a total celebrity with the school kids here, who are excited to see him every year. “We keep growing the program every year and we keep adding to it. The second grade students are required to study a country and we worked together to build this learning curriculum,” she says of the Guinea Project. “All the teachers get onboard with different projects in their classes.”
Angie gives a presentation to the class about Guinea, then the students work for three weeks doing research and comparisons of Guinea and the U.S. “We come up with a question every year,” she says. For example, one year the focus was on how the Guinea markets compare to stores in the U.S. “Whatever they’re interested in, like the weather, landscape, environment, people, life there is compared to life here.”
Fara will also answer questions in addition to teaching the students dance, song and drumming. Each year curriculum is made to align with happenings at the school in Guinea and in Crested Butte. Because of the time difference, the kids can’t do Zoom or live streams, but they record videos to share and write letters to exchange with the other students in Guinea. The videos include snow sports and Ski for P.E. since the kids in Guinea don’t get to see snow.
Kissidugu also creates more than music and dance, they create ways to improve the lives and living conditions of Guineans. The CB kids also had fundraisers to raise money to plant breadfruit trees on the Kissidugu campus in Guinea. This year, they’re trying to raise funds to buy shoes, soccer balls and air pumps for the balls. “They are all things those kids can use and we’re collecting useful items,” Angie says. “But what we really need is for people to donate money to the fund the Kissidugu program to keep it alive and to support it in Guinea. While you’re enjoying the theatre show at the CB Center for the Arts, that money is feeding people in Guinea.”
Angie says that the campus buildings in Guinea are built with mud bricks by filling discarded, recycled plastic bottles with sand and then cementing them into place to make walls, “There are so many plastic water bottles. We talk to the kids about solar and wind power because most of Guinea is off-grid. The Guinea culture is really rich, but they’re not. We’ve gotten water filters, dug a well, and introduced hippo rollers,” she says. The latter is a device that allows Guineans to push gallons of water across the ground to get to their homes. “People can spend all day just walking to get water and then carrying just a bucket back and these devices help.” She explains that the rollers make it easier and quicker to transport more water.
The goal now is to expand the Guinea campus to include studies abroad in the future. “We already do student exchanges to study music, dance and environmental education. We’re building and slowing growing the campus. Simultaneously, we’re supporting U.S. and Guinea artists and educators.”
For more information about the Kissidugu Foundation and its projects, visit the website: kissidugu.org. You can also learn about the Colorado events, dates, programs and classes offered from that website as well.
