Halim El-Dabh
Halim El-Dabh is a Professor Emeritus of African Ethno-Musicology from Kent State University. He has traveled the world on projects by such organizations as the Smithsonian Institute studying and participating in the music of tribal cultures, and was honored at the reopening of the library at Alexandria. He is an experienced drummer and performer on a wide variety of authentic African musical instruments and on keyboard. He was a soloist with Leopold Stokowsky, and he's the composer of the music for Martha Graham's Clytemnestra, Nuriev and Maugo Fontayne's The Fallen Angel Lucifer, Nile Festival Music, Ramses the Great Symphony, Lament of the Pharaoh, and the sound-light show for the Pyramid of Egypt. His production Opera Flies was part of the 25th Anniversary memorial program for the Kent State shooting. A pioneer in the field of electronic music, he has a CD compilation of early work entitled Crossing Into the Electric Magnetic. Halim has worked with both the Ohio Arts Council and Cleveland Public Theatre On Blue Sky Transmissions: The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and his latest Electronic Opera will be simulcast from Public Square in Cleveland, OH to Johannesburg, South Africa, September 2nd, 2005.
Experiencing the Lightness of Gravity
In this two-part workshop/ritual, Halim El-Dabh and the participants, using vocal utterances, trance drumming, and body movements, will experience the lightness of gravity through the transformative power of sound. In Part I Halim will explain the idea behind this ritual experience and trace the sources of the utterances he will use, which will mostly be from Africa and aboriginal Australia and New Zealand. In Part II, he will lead the ritual experience itself.
