“Songs and Rhythms of the African New World” by percussionist Michael Wingfield provided a dynamic educational event March 3 for both International Week and the closing of the exhibition “From Latin America to Little Havanna” in the Karl Drerup Art Gallery.
Through instruments such as conga, bata, shekere, and other percussive arts, Wingfield imparted the spirit and history of the African diaspora in a way that spoke to issues of diversity that span the Western Hemisphere. Doug Desjardin, a senior BFA major found the event to be “a great learning experience combining sound with visual rhythm.”
A performer and teacher with over 20 years experience in the arts, Wingfield wove displays of his own rythmic skills into the participatory performance that allowed an integrated arts experience. Colombian weaver Pilar Tobón talked her weavings on display in the gallery in words that also describe the inspiration behind Michael’s work. Tobón explained that her work “is a product of my intense devotion to the constant search for my roots and my quest to find the perspective offered by the symbolism and the ancestral magic inherent to our culture.”
Wingfield’s infectious love of traditional rhythms and folklore took the student, faculty and community audience beyond cultural appreciation to cultural engagement. He used his gracious stage manner to involve observers as participants in stories that allowed everyone in the gallery to appreciate how much Americans collectively know about Greek gods and mythology in contrast to their scant understanding of orishas (Yoruban spirits) and stories from African traditions. Symbolic colors and charactersistics of the orishas were dramatized by PSC students while “spectators” learned chants and rhythms that gave voice to and calmed these spirits.
Senoir art major Robert Ball said “He brought out my African-American spirit, let me jive like a turkey, kept the four-and-one rhythm and transformed me into the African god, Ogun.”
Similar experiences could be seen in the art on display in the Karl Drerup Art Gallery in works like Lubolos (oil on canvas,1996) by Uruguayan Dan Pontet. An accompanying panel discussed the three Latino figures doing the same thing as the PSC students had been doing during Wingfield’s performance beating “bata drums… in images that evoke the voices of the orishas that traveled with Yoruba slaves from the West Coast of Africa to the Americas to become part of the new culture.”
Virginia Garltiz, chair of the College foreign language department made the link between Wingfield’s and Pontet’s work when consulting on the exhibition in December and invited Wingfield to Plymouth. This partnership helped bring students like Mat Hobert a senior spanish major, to listen, drum and chat with the performer in a model integrated arts experience.