West African inspired art at Downtown Artists Cellar
Aug. 16—MALONE — New Hampshire resident Dave Kobrenski — noted author, artist, and musician— showcases two decades of West African cultural immersion through original artwork in an exhibition, Aug. 18-Sept. 16, at the Downtown Artist Cellar, 410 East Main Street, in Malone.
OPENING
At the opening reception, Aug. 25, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., Kobrenski will seamlessly weave together music and storytelling in a multimedia presentation featuring anecdotes and stories about his travels and live performances on instruments including the Fula Flute, djembe, and kamalengoni, a mesmerizing 10-string African harp.
"There's a lot of stories and anecdotes I like to tell about culture and the importance of diversity and what we can learn from other cultures," he said.
"I try to make it kind of an educational experience, but also entertaining."
EXHIBITION
The exhibition features art from Kobrenski's first two books, "Djoliba Crossing" and "Drawing on Culture."
"While I was living in West Africa, as I said, I made a lot of art while I was there," Kobrenski said.
"I had an art studio set up in Kouroussa at one point. I was really sort of determined to portray the experience that I was having, the people that I was living with in a way that was beyond just photographs. I did a whole lot of paintings, drawings, and sketches."
For two decades, Kobrenski visited the Malinké people of Guinea.
"It's mostly portraits of West African people," he said.
"People who I've become very close with over the years. A lot of art work showing the culture, showing the music in particular, and the dance. This exhibit is a collection of about 25 pieces of artwork from all those years dating all the back from 2001 until the present."
ART TRAJECTORY
Kobrenski majored in art, with concentrations in painting and illustration, at Syracuse University, where he earned a BFA in 1996.
"When I was in art school in Syracuse, I did an internship with the anthropology department on a project that was based in West Africa," he said.
"My job was to come up with a series of illustrations that were based around this archaeological dig that was happening in Ghana. It kind of really first piqued my interests in West African culture and music."
During the internship, Kobrenski poured through slides, artifacts, and photographs.
"Never, of course, went to West Africa during that time," he said.
"But years later, I ended up in the same exact spot where the archaeological dig had taken place so it kind of came full circle even though other things brought me there eventually."
AFRICA BOUND
Years later, Kobrenski had an opportunity to study music with some folks, Joh Camara for example, from West Africa who were living in Boston at the time.
"I was based in and around the Boston area at the time," he said.
"One thing led to another, and I became really fascinated with the music of West Africa and started taking classes, and then ultimately teaching music classes as I got deeper and deeper into it.
"I ended up in West Africa for my first time in 2001 and sort of never looked back. It was just such an enthralling experience, and I met so many wonderful people. I sort of at the time was making my living by teaching and performing music, so it was kind of a good fit."
CULTURE SHOCK
Art through his Syracuse internship introduced him first to the culture of West Africa, but it was music that brought him to the continent.
"It was a pretty amazing and wild experience," he said.
"Growing up in New Hampshire, going to school in New York and then suddenly being plunked down in a Third World country, West Africa. My first impression was oh my God, this is like another planet in some ways.
"Culturally, it was so different. The sights and the sounds, it was a whole new world for me. I absolutely loved it. It was not an easy trip for sure. I ended up spending three months there."
Kobrenski arrived in August 2001, and then Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks occurred while he was in Ghana.
"My trip got extended by about a month because all flights were canceled, and I kind of got stuck in Ghana for quite a few extra weeks," he said.
"It kind of made it a little bit more harrowing, but at the same time it was just such an amazing experience. I kind of didn't want to leave."
At the time, Kobrenski had been teaching music with a focus on West African drumming.
"A man from Ghana reached out to me because I had developed this program in New Hampshire teaching students and bringing it to schools and all that kind of stuff," he said.
"This man from Ghana asked if I would be interested in helping him work on a cultural center in his village in Ghana with the aim of bringing Westerners there to study music and dance. Long story short, I said yes, and ended up there outside of Accra, Ghana where I worked with him to help him with his culture center that was for both the youth of the area and for westerners. It was just an amazing experience. I became great friends with this man, Nii Tetteh Tettey."
PASSING BEATS
When Kobrenski returned from Ghana, he was all fired up from his first African sojourn.
"My students back home were excited," he said.
"I had so much more to teach. My program kept growing. I was teaching between 70 and 80 students every single week and going into schools. It gave me an opportunity to one, get really good at this West African drumming but also gave me an excuse to go back every year because I had students that were sort of eager for new material and for new stuff."
DJEMBE GRANDMASTER
In 2002, Kobrenski met the renowned Famoudou Konaté, a Malinké master drummer from Guinea and virtuoso of the djembe drum and its orchestra.
"He is a living link to the old culture," he said.
"He invited me to come and stay with he and his family in Conakry, Guinea, which I did. I had this opportunity to study with this living legend. All my other trips were somehow related to Famoudou Konaté. He comes from this small village in the northern center of Guinea in the Kouroussa region. I spent many years traveling to his village on the banks of the Niger River."
CULTURAL APPROPRIATION?
Kobrenski taught students, primarily white, in grade schools, high schools, adult education programs, and private classes geared to adults.
Of Polish descent, he has been asked many times about why he does what he does.
"In the last 20 years, it's something I've thought a lot about and talked a lot about with my dear friends in West Africa about how to bridge this divide and what is the bigger reason for doing all of this beyond and above just music?" he said.
"My teachers there, Famoudou and another man named, Lanciné Condé(a master of the Malinké flute tradition), who I became like a member of his family until he passed away just about a year ago, sadly, we would talk about this all the time, about the importance of showing the world the cultural brilliance that exists in West Africa."
Formerly French Guinea, Guinea achieved independence in 1958.
"One of the first things they did was to create this amazing performance group that had the best talent from all around the country, drummers, dancers, musicians and singers," he said.
"They sent this group (Les Ballets Africains) out into the world to perform on some of the biggest stages around the world as a way of showing the world, in particular the European world, the Western world, this is who we are. We are not a French colony. We're not nobody. This was like the ambassador to the world."
Konaté, 84, emphasizes the importance of representing the culture and telling people who they are, and where this music comes from and why it is important.
"And not just being a superficial kind of like oh, isn't this cool, but really talking about and helping people understand the culture of Guinea, the culture of West Africa," Kobrenski said.
Over the years, he has brought some of his West Africans friends to the states to teach and share their culture.
"One of the first things that Famoudou ever said to me, I'll never forget it, is he said music is colorblind," he said.
"Music doesn't know black or white. He wants people in the world to understand this music and to play it, but to also respect it and respect where it comes from. So that has been a big part of my mission over the years. Really, it's one of the goals of the art exhibit."
One particular year, Kobrenski spent four months in a small village in West Africa getting to know the people and learning their stories.
"I had my art supplies with me, just pencil and paper," he said.
"I just spent time drawing portraits of them and gathering their stories so I could have a way to share with people here in the United States like this is who these people are. This is what their culture is."
Kobrenski says the Africans in so many ways, just like us in the West.
"These are wonderful brilliant human beings with this vibrant culture," he said.
"That's kind of what I'm trying to portray in both with my music projects and with this art exhibit."
The question is how to heal the horrible racism and the roots of the racism that exists in the United States?
"I don't know that I can solve that myself, but I just know that music is a really good bridge to bring us together if people can come together on this sort of thing," he said.
"Through that process, build bridges. Start to tear down these walls that shouldn't exist. I have an anthropologist friend who likes to say that the field of genetics and science has taught us that all humans on earth are 99.9% genetically similar.
"This idea of race is actually sort of a myth. We just created these artificial divides in our society that we have to work really hard on all sides to do away with. My role is to do that through music in the best way I can."
Email: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com
Twitter@RobinCaudell
