Nana Korantemaa Ayeboafo

Nana is a master drummer and shaman. She uses the drum as a sacred tool for healing and teaching. Her goals are to reconnect people to African values and rhythms and also to empower women. In 1972 she formed the first female percussion ensemble in Philadelphia and has been a powerful role model for transgressing gender/sex-role boundaries in traditional drumming. She served as the female lead drummer for the Arthur Hall Afro-American Dance Ensemble, played congas in the 1996 film Watermelon Woman, and in 2003 became the first female in the United States and Ghana to play the atumpan drums. Nana is on a mission to share the healing power of indigenous African cultural expression with communities of African descent all over the world and in the process help to erase stereotypes about women's roles.

Nana will establish a 4-week intensive HIV/AIDS Prevention Peer Education Training Program with youth in North Philadelphia, resulting in the creation of a musical theatre troupe. In January 2006, Nana conducted a similar program in Larteh, Ghana working with peer educators 18-66. They created a play, 13 songs, 2 rap songs, 8 poems and 7 theatrical skits as tools to educate their communities about HIV/AIDS. At the StarSpirit center in North Philly, where this project will take place, children as young as 5 and adults as old at 79 come together to perform and create. The StarSpirit players will be change agents to help the flow of information about HIV/AIDS rates in the Black community, which leads the entire nation in new HIV cases, and stem the tide of this epidemic.

Nana will build upon her ongoing collaboration with the Stanton Public School, where she has taught short African drumming workshops in the school's Cultural Arts Program, since 2003. This grant will enable Nana to teach the drum class/ drumming circle continuously throughout the school year, teaching children drumming, elements of music and composition, and live performance skills. Nana hopes that learning drums will give young people an identity and stronger sense of self, as it did for her when she stumbled upon Arthur Hall's Afro-American Experience as a young African American women living in North Philadelphia leading her on the path to become the Master Drummer she is today. In addition to the continuity of working with students over a year, this opportunity will result in better drumming skills and more live performances in which the young people can share their talents with friends, family and the larger community.