Africa Initiative

African Expressive Culture

Pan African Dance and Music Ensemble (PADAME)

In 2004, the Expressive Culture Working Group decided that the best way for students to learn the intricacies of African music and dance would be through the creation of a Mande drum/dance ensemble. Jembe drums and dun duns were purchased and a combined dance and drum class, taught by Malian master drummer Mohamed ‘Joh’ Camara, was offered through the Office of the Arts. This set in motion the idea of participatory learning in West African music and dance.

In 2005, PADAME was officially recognized as a student organization, exceeding the expectations of co-directors, members, and faculty advisers Prof. Ingrid Monson and Dr. Deborah Foster.  With the financial help of the Working Group, it secured Joh Camara as official group choreographer and instructor.  This stellar cadre of drummers and dancers has performed in venues including Harvard Foundation's Cultural Rhythms show, ARTS FIRST, and Committee on African Studies receptions. Its repertoire includes choreography by Joh Camara and Pape N’Diaye, a Senegalese choreographer. In October 2007, PADAME had the unique honor of leading the procession of Presidents at President Drew Faust’s installation ceremony.

Senghor Symposium

October 2006 marked the one hundredth anniversary of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s birth. The occasion was widely celebrated throughout the world in acknowledgement of his contribution, as poet and theoretician of Negritude, to contemporary African and Black literary and intellectual life. It is in this context that the Senghor Symposium at Harvard  was organized by the Expressive Culture Working Group on October 20th under the title “Senghor The Ancestor.”

A publication is being planned based on the following papers delivered at the symposium:

F. Abiola Irele, “Introduction: Senghor the Ancestor”
Janet Vaillant, “Léopold Sédar Senghor: 1906-2001”
Sana Camara, “The Traditional Background to Senghor’s Poetry”
Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi, “Senghor Revisited”
Sylvie Kandé, "An Hermeneutic Reading of Senghor's Chaka"
Olabiyi Yai, Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of the Benin Republic to UNESCO, “The Latin American Affinities of Senghor’s Poetry"
Michael Saman,  "Senghor's Other Europe”
Souleymane Diagne, “Léopold Sédar Senghor as Philosopher.”

"Ethiopians in America: The Practice and Performance of Cultural Creativity in Diaspora"

Conference, Workshops and Performance, April 13-14, 2008

Organized by Prof. Kay Kaufman Shelemay, this conference is intended to bring issues relevant to the performance of Ethiopian diaspora cultural and artistic life to the broader African Studies community at Harvard.