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On the SUNY Fredonia campus, he’s an adjunct instructor who specializes in African drumming in the School of Music and also a senior majoring in International Studies and Arts Administration.
But on Saturday, Nov. 10, Bernard Woma – Dagara xylophone sticks held tightly in both hands – will be in the spotlight in New York City when he joins the New York Philharmonic on stage at the Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall.
Mr. Woma has played the Dagara xylophone, known in his native Ghana as a gyill, with orchestras around the world since 1990, but this appearance at the orchestra’s Young People’s Concert series at 2 p.m. signals a career highlight.
“It has fulfilled my destiny to becoming a musician,” Mr. Woma said his featured artist role. “It has always been my career goal to do things in an extraordinary way,” he explained, and to integrate his own music with other styles. He couldn’t have picked a more prestigious orchestra and venue than the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center.
The Dagara xylophone, or gyill, that Mr. Woma plays has keys hand-carved from fire-dried tropical rosewood and dried gourds, which act as resonators. Every gourd has three sound holes, each covered with vibrating membrane or covering made of spider web material. A buzzing effect, unlike that of a Western xylophone, is created when air passes through the gourd and vibrates against the membrane.
“I was born to play. I came out of my mother’s womb with my fists like this,” he said, referring to fingers clutched tightly together, as if each were holding a wooden mallet. The few babies born in Ghana with their hands held that way invariably become great musicians, Mr. Woma said, and uphold that country’s musical heritage.
“I have a great passion for the instrument,” he added. “The sound is so healing for me. I could play the instrument 24 hours, non-stop.”
Mr. Woma, who began playing the xylophone at the age of 2, has served as solo xylophonist with the Ghana Dance Ensemble since 1989 and was ultimately appointed master drummer of the company. He conducts workshops, lectures and private lessons with musicians throughout the United States and Europe, and also owns and operates his own school of traditional African music and arts, Dagara Music Center, in Ghana.
This won’t be Mr. Woma’s first musical visit to New York. He performed an original composition with “Alarm Will Sound,” a 21-piece chamber orchestra, at Carnegie Hall in 2006. He’s also played with the Orchard Park Symphony Orchestra, was the ceremonial drummer at the reception that welcomed President Bill Clinton to Ghana in 1997 and also played at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
At the November concert, Mr. Woma and four percussionists comprising the Bernard Woma Ensemble will play the traditional version of “Dust Dirt,” a piece written by Derek Bermel, one of Mr. Woma’s former students in Ghana. And then, Mr. Woma, without his musical colleagues, will play the same piece, accompanied by the full orchestra.
Mr. Bermel, now a renowned international composer based in New York, connected Mr. Woma with the New York Philharmonic.
Mr. Woma’s ties with SUNY Fredonia were forged nearly 15 years ago by Dr. Karolyn Stonefelt, professor of music, who visited Ghana as a Fulbright Scholar and worked with the Ghana Dance Ensemble. She was immediately impressed with the musical talent and skills of the group’s gyill player.
“He was quite young at the time,” Dr. Stonefelt recalls, “and had amazing technical and musical facility and understanding. He not only knows the style of his own people, but he knew styles of many areas or regions in West Africa, which was unusual. He was the only person that I knew that had that much extensive knowledge.”
Mr. Woma, who has belonged to the adjunct faculty ranks at SUNY Fredonia since 1998, will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in May 2008.
