Wild Perspectives: African Connections
Monday, May 2
7-9 p.m.
Admission: $20 per person includes beer, wine and desserts
Space is limited
Ticket sales end Friday, April 29 at 5 p.m
Tickets will not be available at the door. All sales are final, no refunds or exchanges will be made.
Enjoy two lectures in one evening as Denver Zoo hosts Wild Perspectives: African Connections.
David Western
African Conservation Centre, Nairobi
People and Wildlife in Africa: Is There a Place for Both?
The greatest wildlife herds on earth have thrived alongside pastoral peoples like the Maasai for more than 3,000 years in Africa. How do you explain this remarkable coexistence, given that the great Pleistocene herds were driven to extinction in the Americas, Europe and Asia? What future is there for Africa’s large migratory herds in the face of population growth and economic development?
David Western explores these questions in a far-reaching talk based on four decades of research into people and wildlife in the savannas and his experience directing national and international conservation programs.
About David Western:
He is chairman of the African Conservation Centre, Nairobi. He began research into savanna ecosystems at Amboseli in 1967, looking at the interactions of humans and wildlife. His work, unbroken since then, has served as a barometer of changes in the savannas and a test of conservation solutions based on the continued coexistence of people and wildlife. Western directed Wildlife Conservation Society programs internationally, established Kenya’s Wildlife Planning Unit, chaired the African Elephant and Rhino Specialist Group, and was founding president of The International Ecotourism Society, chairman of the Wildlife Clubs of Kenya, director of Kenya Wildlife Service and founder of the African Conservation Centre in Nairobi. He is an adjunct professor in Biology at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Minnesota.
Kwasi Ampene
Associate Professor of Musicology at University of Colorado, Boulder; Coordinator, Ethnomusicology; Director of the West African Highlife Ensemble
African Cultures, Traditions, And Their Relationship With Music
The diverse traditions and cultures in Africa present profound challenges to all those who engage, in some way, with the continent. In order to capture the substance of this complexity, Dr. Ampene shall discuss this topic within the larger framework of binaries.
His concept of binaries is encapsulated in discourses of Tradition and Modernity; and discourses of the Local and the Global. That is, African cultures, traditions, and their musics are expressions of oral traditions that, on the one hand, have been passed on from generation to generation with the necessary transformations that make all cultural institutions relevant in modern times. On the other hand, the African continent has been a major player for centuries in world commerce, intercultural exchanges and encounters, and socio-political currents. As a result, there are new social identities that inform and underlie new creative expressions that are locally performed but are part of the global metropolis. With these binaries in mind, and drawing on his field research in Asante Court Music in Ghana, Dr. Ampene shall discuss the construction of Asante Experience and Values through the Fontomfrom drumming and dance movements of the Asante King as he negotiates the past in the present in Remembrance rituals.
The second part of his presentation will focus on one of the modern musical genres, Ghanaian Highlife, and Dr. Ampene’s work with the CU-Boulder West African Highlife Ensemble.
About Dr. Kwasi Ampene:
He earned his Ph.D from the University of Pittsburgh in 1999 and has been a member of faculty in the University of Colorado College of Music since the fall of 2000. As an African music specialist, Ampene specializes in the rich musical traditions of the Akan of Ghana. His publications include, Female Song Tradition and the Akan of Ghana: The Creative Process in Nnwonkoro (Ashgate UK, 2005), “Mensah, E.T.” in the New Encyclopedia of Africa (Charles Scribner’s Sons/The Gale Group, 2007) and a review of Ruth Stone’s Music of West Africa in the flagship journal, Ethnomusicology (2007), and Jacqueline C. Djedje’s Fiddling in West Africa in American Ethnologist (2009). He has given numerous presentations on various aspects of African music and cultures at major universities, national and international conferences including the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, the Second International Symposium on the Music of Africa at Princeton University, a colloquium at the University of Ghana, and the 2009 54th annual Society for Ethnomusicology meeting in Mexico City. Currently he is doing fieldwork on Akan Court Music Traditions for his next book project.
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