Black World Music Fest aims to educate and entertain

• Reprints

The dance group, Echoes of Southern Africa, will perform at the Black World Music Festival at Dominican Unviersity in River Forest.

Updated: January 23, 2012 2:49AM

Khumbuzile Dlamini gets annoyed when non-African people assume that the cultures in all African countries are the same.

The Swaziland-born artistic director for the dance group Echoes of Southern Africa hopes the cultural performances of the Tswana, Xhosa, Sotho, Venda, Swazi, Zulu, Pedi, Shangane, Shona, Ndebele, Basarwa and Himba, representing seven countries at the bottom of the continent, will enlighten observers.

“A lot of people just take it for granted that we’re all one, big African country, and we’re not,” she said. “I mean, I get questions like ‘What’s the national anthem for Africa?’ ”

Education is the key, she said.

So, Dlamini is bringing Echoes of Southern Africa to sing and dance at Dominican University’s Black World Music Festival. The program will help support the school’s Elders’ Council quest to fund an endowment scholarship for black students planning on majoring in Black World Studies.

Scholarship fundraiser

Performances by other African dancers and musicians, as well as Caribbean and Haitian performance artists, will help raise $25,000 for the scholarship fund. The university had said it will match the council’s $25,000, thus creating a $50,000 scholarship endowment fund.

Professor Nkuzi Nnam, director of Black World Studies at Dominican, said the Elders’ Council, which is the advisory board helping to create programs for Black World Studies, has already raised $15,000.

“Hopefully with this, $10,000 will be raised,” he said of the festival.

Nnam said all the artists are donating their time to perform.

Music from all over

Rafo St. Vil, Haitian-born leader of Rafo International Combo de Chicago, performs a mixture of Haitian, American, European, French, Creole and Spanish music. He said he was happy to donate his time since so many people made monetary donations to help aid the people of Haiti and to help rebuild the island nation.

Other artists who are of the same mindset as Dlamini and Rafo include IK Adophy & the De Meritable Band (African Highlife, Soukous, Gospel and other music), Mercy Ngozi Alu (Nigerian singer), NDI Solidarity Dike (Nigerian dances including traditional Igbo youth dance) and Enugu State Masquerade (Nigerian dance).

Dlamini is excited about the prospect of more students learning about the varied African cultures and hopes an exchange program will develop. She’d even welcome student interns in Echoes of Southern Africa.

“This is a very good program and we’re very happy to be in support of it,” she said, referring to the Black World Studies program.

While the purpose of the festival is to raise money for educational purposes, Nnam sees this becoming something people can add to their list of summertime festivals to attend in the Chicago area. He’d like the festival to include more black nations in the future.

“If it goes well,” he said, “maybe it can be an annual event.”