Arts Spotlight: Performing Arts Series

A musical collaborative of East African artists drawn from eleven countries touching the world’s longest river will visit the College Mar. 30 through Apr. 3. The Nile Project uses music to raise awareness for the Nile Basin’s sustainability challenges.

During four days of residency activities including participatory workshops, keynote talks and class visits, the Nile Project artists will explore a variety of cultural, political and environmental issues, culminating in a high-energy public concert on Thursday, April 2 at 8:00 p.m. in Wilson Hall of the College’s McCullough Student Center.

For many of us, hydropolitics is an abstract intellectual concept we might discuss briefly in our course  fulfilling the AAL requirement. Along the Nile, however, it affects millions of lives every day. In the United States, we have so much water that even the contents of your toilet bowl are potable. But for one of the fastest growing population areas in the world, conflict over river access began thousands of years ago and has only grown more impassioned with the passage of time. Since 2011, project participants have worked to transform the Nile conflict by inspiring, educating and empowering an international network of students to cultivate sustainability in their ecosystem.

Inspired by Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, Egyptian ethnomusicologist Mina Girgis and Ethiopian-American singer Meklit Hadero conceived the Nile Project in 2011. Their mission was to educate, inspire and empower the citizens of the Nile Basin to foster the sustainability of the river’s ecosystem through musical collaboration.

The project’s model integrates programs in music, education, dialogue, leadership and innovation to engage citizens and students across disciplines and geographies. The concert experience, brings together an international group of musicians from Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda and the U.S. to inspire cultural curiosity, highlight regional connections and showcase the potential of trans-boundary cooperation.

Participatory workshops and cross-cultural dialogues will provide students with unique intellectual experiences to deepen their understanding of the Nile ecosystem. The Nile Fellowship and Nile Prize programs incentivize students to apply their education and training toward mobilizing their peers and pioneering innovative solutions to the Nile Basin’s complex and interrelated challenges.

The Nile Project has garnered significant media attention along its journey toward this tour. The group’s first recording, Aswan, was named one of National Public Radio (NPR)’s Top Must-Hear International Albums of 2013. NPR said, “the results are joyous and even raucous …  You can hear just how much fun the crowd is having — and how tight the band is, even as their instrumental multitudes adeptly combine everything from indigenous instruments like the Ugandan adungu lyre to saxophone and bass.”

NPR followed up on that review with a broadcast story “Producing Harmony in a Divided Region” in September 2014. When the Nile Project made its January 2015 premiere at New York City’s Globalfest, The New York Times hailed the group as “a committed, euphoric international coalition.”

The Nile Project residency consists of five major events between Tuesday, March 31 and Friday, April 3.

Tuesday, March 31st, musicians from the project will present a lively master class surveying music and dance traditions from several of the eleven countries bordering the basin at 4:30 p.m. in room 221 of the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts (MCA).

Wednesday, April 1st, the Nile Project founder, Mina Girgis, will give the keynote address, breaking down her creative process and exploring the ingredients necessary for successful cross-cultural collaboration at 7 p.m. in the MCA Concert Hall.

Thursday, April 2, a panel of speakers will lecture on civic engagement and the management of water resources at 12:30 p.m. in the Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest.

Friday, April 3rd, project’s female musicians with visit and talk with Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Merrill Baker-Medard’s Gender, Health and the Environment class at 9:05 a.m. in Axinn 109. This event is open only to students.

All of the Nile Project activities, including earlier introductory events by African music star Herbert Kinobe and ethnomusicologist Sylvia Nannyonga-Tamusuza, are supported by the Expeditions program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts with additional support from the six New England state arts agencies.

The Nile Project concert will take place on Thursday, April 2 at 8:00 p.m. in Wilson Hall. Audience members are encouraged to come ready to dance, though seating will also be available.

Tickets are $25 for the general public; $20 for Middlebury College faculty, staff, alumni, emeriti and other ID card holders; and $6 for  students. Go/boxoffice for tickets.