Kulu Mele
African Dance & Drum Ensemble

Saturday, February 21, 2009
Two shows!   11 am and 1 pm
at Martin Library in York

Skip funding acknowledgments and go to event details »

With support from the Governor's Advisory Commission on African American Affairs.

With support from Pennsylvania Performing Arts On Tour (PennPAT).

Made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.

A part of our Martin Library series, presented in cooperation with Martin Library.

Kulu Mele, which means "voice of our ancestors", is a high-strutting, low-stomping dance troupe and its drumming ensemble. Kulu Mele blend the dance traditions of West Africa and African America, drawing on cultural dances of countries including Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal, Brazil, Haiti and Cuba.

Since its creation, Kulu Mele has established a national reputation as a unique and dynamic performing company. Their performances are authentic, entertaining, and culturally grounded in traditional aesthetic dance forms and music. All dances are authentically costumed and choreographed to convey not only artistic excellence but also the meanings of dancing and drumming in the African societies from which these traditions come.

To Learn More...

• Visit Kulu Mele's website
• Read article from SFMS's newsletter

Music Samples and Video at...

• Kulu Mele’s website

About Kulu Mele

Founder Baba Crowder began drumming as a child in North Philadelphia in the late 1930s. He began to see commonalties in African music from different places and has long been in the vanguard of an African cultural renaissance in Philadelphia. He has received the region’s most prestigious award for artists, the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and awards from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Artistic director Dorothy Wilkie began to pursue serious study of a wide repertoire of African and African Disporan dance in 1955. In 2007 she was awarded a prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts for dance choreography.

Musical director/drummer John Wilkie started playing congas in the 1950s in his North Philadelphia high school. He has studied with percussionists who were among the first to study African and African-Cuban hand drum traditions. Wilkie has traveled to Guinea, Senegal, and Cuba for drum study and been a member of the Spoken Hand Drum Society and a Philadelphia Folklore Project artist in residence.