Dahomey Women's Ensemble

This is an all-women's ensemble that will
primarily focus on learning how to play
traditional drumming from Ghana, West Africa.
Students will learn the complex layers and
polyrhythms of this music as well as the songs and
dances that accompany it. In addition to learning
how to play this music this course will also teach
students about the historical and sociological
aspects of this music from its past and how it is
today. In most traditional African societies,
women are not allowed to drum and are limited to
singing and dancing. Dahomey, now present-day
Benin, was an African kingdom that existed between
1600 and the late 1800s. It is from this kingdom
that came a tribe of women warriors known as the
Dahomey Amazons. This all women battalion
protected the palace and its king when there were
not enough men to do so. One of the main musical
masterpieces of traditional Ghanaian drumming is a
war dance that was adapted from the ancient times
where men would take an oath of allegiance and
fight to their possible deaths, while women stayed
in the background as a support system.. It is now
socially acceptable for women to dance these roles
as an entertainment piece, but to this day, it is
still only men that you will find drumming this
music. In a day and age where women are
continually underrepresented and overlooked for
opportunities in Music, Film and beyond, it is
vital that we as women are empowered to control
the course and change the narrative in every part
of the workforce. It is in the spirit of the
great Dahomey Women warriors, that the Dahomey
Women's Ensemble ushers us into the "future of the
female" and that our place is EVERYWHERE!