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The KUSUM AGORO Multicultural Arts Project-( KAMAP) is an Arts in Education and comprehensive
cultural programs facilitated by professional African performers in New York for audiences of all
ages, races, backgrounds and at all levels for multicultural understanding and appreciation.
AFRICUSSION is the professional performing group of the KAMAP. Africussion comes from
Africa,Percussion and Discussion. It is a new experiment at creating new genre of music using African percussion as the
foundation for discussion. In this experience, the musicians of Africussion explore the use of contemporary musical instruments
of guitar and aerophones such as sax and trumpets in a dialogue with African creative percussion. Africussion's musicians
also are the facilitators of the KAMAP Arts in Education Programs.
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Mission
To increase public participation
in traditional African performing arts, enhance cultural awareness, ease public accessibility to the richness of African heritage,
and enrich the lives of people from diverse background through performance and education.
Background of the founder:
Harold Akyeampong, a master teaching artiste and a performer is the
director of KAMAP. He has a performance name, Okyerema Akyeampon (a cham pon) which means the master drummer, keeper
and promoter of culture. The KAMAP is a subsidiary of the Center for World Folkloric Arts. Together with some professional
performers from Africa and the USA, the group perform and teach at academic institutions, organizations and conferences
around the world. Okyerema Akyampon has been featured on Voice of America (African Service) Washington DC, New
York 1 Television as well as Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN). He has over twenty years of performance and teaching
experience educating people of all levels from public schools to private institutions from Africa through Europe to the United States. Okyerema is a drum
master, percussionist, singer, dancer, choreographer, storyteller, lecturer and an ethnomusicologist.
Okyerema’s contagious joy of life and delight in his audience
provide a vibrant and uplifting experience of African celebration. He inspires his audience to celebrate cultural diversity
among all people.
Okyerema hold degrees from Ghana and US Universities. He is an adjunct lecturer
at the Dazzle School of Visual and Performing Arts, Rochester, where he is the music director of its resident African
dance company, Afrikuumba. He is also a international director of the International Center of African Culture and Arts (ICACA-Ghana).
Okyerema belongs to a number of professional organizations in Africa and in the United States. He is currently the President of the Ghana Percussive Arts
Society( the first chapter of the world famous music service organization, the Percussive Arts Society. He is currently
serving as the chairman of the West African Drumming, a subcommittee in the World Drumming Committee of PAS.
Okyerema has studied and performed with a number
of professional percussion and dance instructors, among them Professors Khaleed Ahmad Saleem and Clyde Morgan of SUNY College
at Brockport as well as Jorge Alabe from Brazil and Chris Walker from Jamaica. Okyerema plays not only African Music but that
native to Jamaica, Haiti, Trinidad and Brazil.
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