2006 Summer Camps

Ghana

August 9-24

Fred Onovwersuoke, Patty Cuyler, John Harrison

Village Harmony’s first foray into west Africa will be this two-week long residential camp in Winneba, Ghana. Winneba, located on the Gold Coast with some of the best beaches in the country, is known as Ghana’s unofficial choral music capital and is home to the Winneba Youth Choir, with whom we intend to do some collaborating.

We will study song & dance with local Efutu folk musicians and make expeditions to see and hear traditional dancers and singers in outlying regions as we use Winneba as a base for exploring Ghanian music and culture. We will also learn a set of American gospel and other American traditional music to perform in concert on the short tour that will conclude our stay. Come prepared for an extremely enriching and rewarding musical and cultural voyage in a country considered to be home to the friendliest people in West Africa. Our stay in Ghana will be planned and facilitated by native Ghanian and beloved Village Harmony leader, Fred Onovwersuoke.

Rehearsal center and homestays in Winneba, on the coast of Ghana, west Africa

$1000

Winneba, Ghana

Winneba is an old coastal town on the Gulf of Guinea, about 35 miles west of Accra, the capital city of the small equatorial English-speaking nation. In the early colonial history of the Gold Coast, as Ghana was then called, Winneba served as a port town, and vestiges of the colonial past can still be found along its big stretch of beach.