Workshops

Scott DeVeaux, University of Virginia...

"For the past three years, we have hosted Mr. Dunyo in a residency that lasts for more than a month, and that involves him in the instruction of students ranging in ability and experience from rank beginners to professional percussionists. I have also worked with him to develop workshops and presentations for age-groups ranging from preschool to adult in schools, churches, community centers, and so forth. In all of these contexts, Mr. Dunyo is unfailingly enthusiastic, hard-working, and inspiring. He has a knack for getting beginners involved and preventing them from becoming discouraged by their limited skills. For more advanced students of the music, he is willing to work as long and as hard as necessary to attain a professional, energetic, and wholly authentic mode of performance. He is equally effective in long-term residencies and one-day workshops, always aiming to produce a musical result that will leave a lasting impression on the participants.

"His knowledge of the traditional repertory of the Ewe people of Ghana is exemplary. I have worked and trained with other master drummers from the Ewe tradition, and can honestly say I was thrilled to see and hear an approach to that tradition that is imaginative and fresh as well as authoritative. He is, of course, an expert drummer, equally at home with stick and hand technique. He is also a skilled dancer and choreographer, able to creatively adapt traditional dance repertory to the performing forces at hand.

"In short, Mr. Dunyo's instruction offers an opportunity for interested students of all ages to learn something valuable about traditional African culture in the most enjoyable and memorable way possible--by learning to perform it themselves."

"We in the west tend to overlook the need and importance to appreciate the values of cultures different from our own, despite of fashionable contemporary rhetoric about "world music" in principle. For all the lip service to a `new global musical awareness', our attempts often remain merely conceptual in nature.

"Mr. Dunyo's presence at any of the best universities in North America would be an immense blessing, because the type of musicianship he conveys is exactly the ingredient our departments would need in order to come alive. His musicianship is a deeply ingrained and most intense `gut' experience. Yet it is precise knowledge and immense knowledge at that, which he is singularly capable of transmitting to students and listeners alike.

"The physicality, energy waves, kinetic freedom, mental concentration and musical precision of Dunyo's mnemonic percussion formulae could easily become a blissful hands-on ingredient to any serious music theory course that claims to tell anything at all about rhythm to its participants. Dunyo's teaching could never just be regarded as something confined to a `percussion' department. His drumming is contagious and we should do well to let it contaminate as many of us around here as possible.

"Privately, he is a very pleasant, modest individual with a great sense of humour and ease about life; genuinely joyous and seemingly inexhaustible."

"Mr. Dunyo recently taught a two-hour class to students aged 6 to 11 years at the Shambhala Elementary School in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Mr. Dunyo was able to captivate and hold the children's attention while teaching them a phenomenal amount of material. He is skilled at relating to each individual and at the same time, he is easily able to hold a strong awareness and container of the entire group.

"His culture was brought alive through his drumming and dance, and the children came away inspired to study African culture in more depth. Mr. Dunyo's style brought out a sense of pride in the children, in their ability to play the musical instruments and to learn the songs and dances he taught to them. He is patient yet precise, and caring while still demanding good quality from his students."