The Philadelphia Folklore Project presents
Women's Music Project 2003: celebrating ground-breaking women traditional artists

May 15, 2003. Philadelphia, PA. - The Philadelphia Folklore presents a special afternoon celebration of Cambodian folk music, Ghanaian percussion, and Eastern European Jewish klezmer music on Sunday, June 7, 2003 at 2:00 PM at Indre Studios, 1418 S. Darien St. (between 8th and 9th Streets, south of Reed, in South Philadelphia.) The concert features Nana Korantemaa Ayeboafo, Leendavy Koung and Susan Watts - three exceptionally talented women who each challenged musical and gender barriers. Each plays an important role in preserving a distinctive form of traditional music here. The concert will include beautiful and powerful varieties of roots music, including instrumental solos and vocals, ritual passages, love songs and dynamic theatrical pieces.

The Women's Music Project features three distinctive musicians. Philadelphia-born Nana Korantemaa Ayeboafo was one of the first of her generation to reclaim African percussion traditions, and has become deeply engaged in Akan rhythms and culture. Cambodian-born Leendavy Koung has been playing traditional Khmer music for festivals and community occasions since she was young. Susan Watts is a fourth generation klezmer, and the trumpet-playing daughter of klezmer drummer Elaine Watts. For the past year and a half, these extraordinary musicians have been part of a special Philadelphia Folklore Project residency program, teaching young people, and developing their own work.

As an adolescent, Nana Korantemaa Ayeboafo took formal lessons from artists in her North Philadelphia community who had studied with master drummers Baba Olatunji from Nigeria and Saka Acquaye from Ghana, respectively. Her knowledge of percussion was deepened through her experiences as a dancer and drummer with the Arthur Hall Dance Ensemble. She has worked professionally with a wide range of respected African percussionists and dancers, including, Mongo Santamaria, Geoffrey Holder, Judith Jamison, Carmen de Lavalah, Alhaji Bai Konte and others. She formed the first female percussion ensemble in Philadelphia in 1975, one of the vanguard of African American women to reclaim traditional percussion. She spent 7 years in Ghana studying with master drummers and learning Akan drumming techniques in the context of religious and healing practices. This training led to her establishment of the first Akan shrine here in Philadelphia. She writes, "Most importantly, I am a woman doing a kind of music that is historically performed by men." She performs on various hand drums, including conga, and on sekere, bells, marimbas and vocals.

Leendavy Koung plays thirteen Cambodian musical instruments and seven different types of Khmer traditional music, including music for weddings, folk and classical dance, ayaii (rhymed and improvised musical repartee singing), folk and love songs, and more. She comes from an extraordinary musical family: surviving the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, she and her siblings carried the musical instruments that her father had crafted (and taught them to play) through the jungles on a dangerous and hair-raising escape to the Thai refugee camps, and from there, eventually to South Philadelphia. It is still uncommon for women to play Khmer music, but Koung has been performing since 1978, organizing different programs for youth since 1983, and has coordinated arts education programs for youth since 1993 (including co-directing a folk opera). She currently teaches Cambodian dance and music to young people in South Philadelphia.

Susan Watts represents the youngest generation of an important klezmer dynasty that reaches back to the Jewish Ukraine of the 19th century, beginning with her great-grandfather, bandleader, composer, and cornet-player, Joseph Hoffman. Hoffman's handwritten music books contain his own arrangements of horas, Russian shers, polkas, mazurkas, Russian kamaratskies and kazatskies, a czardas, waltzes, freilachs, bulgars, and many other tunes named after the very Russian and Polish towns with which the music was associated. The Hoffman family played for generations of Philadelphia-area Jewish weddings, and parties, and their music became part of a distinctly Philadelphia klezmer repertoire. Susan is the sole living purveyor of the klezmer-style trumpet sounds which electrified Jewish American audiences for decades. Sandler currently plays this music with her mother, the great klezmer drummer Elaine Hoffman Watts, in their Philadelphia-based group, KlezMs. In addition to playing with a variety of noted klezmer musicians from around the world, Watts has recorded and performed with Hankus Netsky, Mikveh, London's Klezmer All-Star Brass Band, and others. Susan has taught at klezmer festivals and provately, and performs in a diverse range of trumpet styles.

The Women's Music Project is a special artist residency and development program organized by the Philadelphia Folklore Project (PFP), a 16-year-old non-profit urban arts agency committed to sustaining local community-based arts. The Philadelphia Folklore Project affirms the human right to culture, and works to protect the rights of people to know and practice traditional and community-based arts. The PFP offers public education in the folk arts, develops community projects and documentary resources, and organizes around issues of concern in the field of folk and traditional arts.

The Women's Music Project - three impressive women sharing music and stories about pushing past barriers as women musicians, and their efforts to sustain important folk and traditional music. For more information, call the Philadelphia Folklore Project at 215.726.1106.

The Women's Music Project is funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Philadelphia Music Project (funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by Settlement Music School), and by PFP members.