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• PO' GIRL
• AFRICAN DRUMMING IN THE SCHOOLS

Southwest Roots Music Day on the Plaza
Featuring alt-folk with PO' GIRL
BORIS & THE SALTLICKS open the show

Tuesday, August 3 at 6:00 on the Santa Fe Plaza.

Our favorite, soulful folk group returns for a free performance as part of Southwest Roots Music Day on the Plaza. This is just one of many great performances scheduled for the Santa Fe Bandstand series. Po' Girl formed innocently enough back in 2002 with the sole intent of singing creaky old folk and jazz songs. Eight years later, the duo has evolved into a quartet of multi-instrumentalists boasting rustic gypsy fiddle, sultry Cajun love songs, Depression-era jazz, moving blues and spirituals. Many world tours and festival gigs (including 2006 and 2010 Thirsty Ear Festival appearances) followed. Like their spiritual sisters The Be Good Tanyas, gorgeous vocal harmonies are a central feature of the band's timeless sound. Po' Girl's latest disc is entitled Follow Your Bliss.

Big thanks to Rick Thaler & OGB Architectural Millwork and Outside-In for supporting Po' Girl's performance.

AFRICAN DRUMMING IN THE SCHOOLS
featuring AKEEM AYANNIYI

In 2010, Southwest Roots Music continues its K-12 music programming by bringing acclaimed Nigerian drummer Akeem Ayanniyi into NM grade schools and to the Thirsty Ear Festival for an interactive program with kids. Akeem heads the Santa Fe-based troupe Agalu, an ensemble from Nigeria that keeps alive traditional Yoruba stories, rituals and mythology through drumming, storytelling and dance. A ninth-generation practitioner of the Yoruba talking drum, Akeem engages students in conversation about the continent of Africa, framed within his own personal story about growing up as a drummer in Nigeria. In addition to stories and song, he demonstrates the traditional talking drum, ashiko, djembe and bata drums, which children have the opportunity to play and experience. A drummer from the age of five, Akeem descends from a family lineage that can be traced back 700 years to the Yoruba deity of drumming, Ayan Agalu. He has toured much of the world and performed at the Smithsonian Institute; the Brooklyn Academy of Music; the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe; Afrikadey! in Calgary, Canada; and the New Mexico Jazz & International Music Festival.

If you are involved with a NM school and would like to enjoy free Southwest Roots Music K-12 programming, please call 505-473-5723.