Production of “Applause” on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

Coming up on “Applause”, a pair of African siblings put down musical roots in Northeast Ohio.

A group of African dancers strut their stuff in Akron.

And a Cleveland choreographer puts her spin on West African culture.

Hello and welcome to another round of “Applause”, my friends.

I'm your host, Ideastream's Kabir Bhatia, and this is an African shekere.

I brought it because this edition of “Applause” is all about African connections to Northeast Ohio's art scene.

So we start with the West African trio, the Zerbo Brothers.

They're originally from war-torn Burkina Faso, but brothers Emmanuel and Joseph have now made their home in Cleveland.

Along with bandmate Darren Hamm, the trio joined IdeaStream's Amanda Rabinowitz for “Applause Performances” Soleil du Faso.

Its dedicated to your homeland in Burkina Faso, West Africa.

So tell us about the meaning of that song in particular so we, you know, we grew up in Africa, you know, West Africa, Burkina Faso, where, you know, from a big family where there's joy and laughter, children running around.

But things have changed for the last 20 years.

Things have gone, like, bad, you know, with political instability, terrorist attacks, and a lot of people not being able to live in their own village anymore because of insecurity.

And because of all those reasons, Burkina is now considered a red zone, basically telling people, don't go there because you can get killed.

So for us, it's our homeland, and we want to bring people back to that, you know, that joy again, because we had such a beautiful childhood there, and it's something— there's something special about it.

So we don't want to focus so much on the dangerous part of it, but we think if we can write song, music can travel.

We can just write song and bring people's mind to know that it's not always going to be bad.

We're hoping for a new rising sun.

Where we talk about hope and joy.

Can you talk a little bit about the setup there?

Because I'm sure to a lot of people, those drums that you have are not things that we're used to seeing.

So can you talk a little bit about what you're playing there with the drums?

Yes, absolutely.

So when you think about Africa, there's a lot of things we don't have access to.

We don't have access to a drum.

We don't have access to Guitar Center or anything like that.

Even if we had access to, we don't have the money to buy it.

So we will use what we have around the house or around the garden, and we just make music out of those things.

So the calabash is— it's a gourd.

It's a big fruit.

It's not edible.

It's a gourd.

And when you grow the calabash, you will just dry it and then cut it in half, take stuff out of it, and then it becomes a plate or an instrument.

So you can use it for multiple purposes.

And at the end of the day, you can play.

There's a different way of playing it.

People play on the sand, flip upside down, or just use using your finger with some rings and tap it, and you get like a nice sound of it.

Or you can use your fist where you get the bass.

So this is a handpan originally from Switzerland, and it's starting to become very popular.

People are using that in yoga studio for meditation.

But, you know, as African, we relate everything to a beat and nice melodies.

So we use it for our own songs, and we have one song called Sequoia where we play this song, this instrument.

This is a kora.

It's an instrument that has 21 strings, and it's totally made out of wood, calabash, and animal skin.

So the kora has about 21— mine has 21 strings, and some koras have 22.

Strings, and the 22nd string is in red.

They made it a red color in memory of the king that came up with the kora, Masawule.

You play to worship kings, and the player doesn't have enough time to grab money sometimes when people give him money, so you have this little hole where people put tip in it, and technically it's supposed to let the sound out, but we can use it for different purposes.

Talk a little bit about arriving here and what this was like for you coming to Northeast Ohio.

Absolutely.

Yeah, so, in 2008, I won the green card, uh, diversity visa to come to America, and I had to find a host family.

And through missionaries, I was able to find the Cressman family in Berea, and they took him in as one of their sons because they have 4 little boys.

And then I was the oldest yet the youngest of the family.

But when I arrived, I had no idea where I was going.

I knew I was going to America, but I didn't know where I was going.

So I arrived in New York and I'm at the airport and they have smoke coming out of my mouth because it was cold.

It was in January and I had this big jacket on.

And then they drive me all the way to Cleveland where we had 18 inches of snow on the ground.

I had no idea what to expect.

And I just called my mom.

I said, hey, this is very depressing because the trees are all gray.

There's no leaves on them.

And I see a deer in my backyard.

I don't know what's going on.

And she's like, you know what?

It's going to be better.

It's going to be okay.

I will listen to the boys in the morning when they say, what would you like for breakfast?

They say Cheerios.

And when I come out, they say, I want Cheerios.

I had no idea what Cheerios was.

So it worked out.

Did you like the Cheerios too?

You know what?

I didn't like it.

I called them baby donuts.

Joseph, I know you arrived many years later, and you were seeking asylum from the troubles in Burkina Faso.

You eventually moved in with Emmanuel into his basement where all the instruments are.

Talk about that time in your life and getting acclimated here too.

Oh, at that time, the good thing keep me like really free is like the family, Emmanuel family, and the music.

Because that was, it's really hard, it's hard.

But with the family, with the music, I try sometimes, Emmanuel, ah, I hear you play music yesterday night, I hear you play music, I play music all the time keep, to keep my, my brain like focused, focused, focused.

And I'm still— I'm good now, nothing bad.

And Darren,you've worked with immigrants.

How difficult is it to learn the language and, and get acclimated here?

It's one of the biggest barriers.

Not everybody comes with functional language, job skills, sometimes even formal education.

So when you're starting from scratch, the language is overwhelming to many people.

So it usually takes a period of years, you know, some people learn more quickly than others.

But I think once that's conquered, I think one of the things is if you can start to understand and tell jokes, you feel you learn the language.

Yeah.

I remember, I remember one time I went to a party and somebody says, oh, this is a piece of cake.

And I was waiting for a piece of cake.

I waited, waited.

And at the end of the game, I said, somebody was talking about a piece of cake.

They're like, no, it's an idiom.

I was like, what is that?

Then I go to the library, I pick this huge book, and then the next day I'm like, hey, stop twiddling your thumb.

It's raining cats and dogs.

And I'm like, oh, it's pretty fun to use them.

But those are the things that can really change your perspective, because if they throw one word that you don't know the meaning, it really shifts everything around.

Yeah.

So I, I don't like to read in English because the idioms are always a limitation for me.

Yeah.

But now it's starting to get a little bit better.

It seems like music is a common language for you all.

Is that a great way to communicate as well?

It is.

Yeah, probably one of the best.

It's really interesting, you know, they come from a culture that music's embedded So you hear them talk about how they've relied on it in difficult times, how they've carried it with them.

In the US, less than 1% of people perform, like, as a performing artist.

So we treat it as kind of an elective, something we do on the side, something we have to study and learn.

It's not built in the fabric.

But you can see how it's treated like medicine in the rest of the world.

Like, it really helps people heal, feel a sense of home, feel a sense of pride.

So it's really easy when we connect, because sometimes we do have some language barriers, but we click really well with music.

You can watch the entire “Applause performances” featuring the Zerbo Brothers on demand with the PBS app.

Up next, we spotlight an African dance troupe from Akron, the Black Beanz.

They're originally from East and Central Africa, and they combine the dance traditions of their homeland with American hip-hop.

The Black Beanz travel the country competing in major dance competitions, We caught up with them in 2023.

The style we do 4 or 5 kind of styles from Africa.

We do South, East, and North Africa.

We do Ndombolo, and that is from Congo, from Central Africa.

And we do Afrobeats, that is from Nigeria.

And we do Amapiano, that is from South Africa.

And we also, we do Bongo Flavor, and that is from Tanzania.

Well, I started dancing when I was like 2 or 3 years old.

That's when I started dancing.

It was just because of like, we used to have parties.

Behind our neighbors every time, like, like, at least just like at night mostly, me and my friends.

And that's when I fall in love with dancing.

We're all from different parts.

We're from 3 different parts of Africa, Central and East Africa.

We're from Congo, Tanzania, and Uganda.

And all of us, most of our tribes, we, they all wear that in most of our tribes.

So basically we look back, way back, we ask our parents What did our people, like our ancestors, wear back in the days?

And we all got the same thing from our parents.

We're like, we can do something with that, you know?

We actually put all the songs together, you know, just sit down and think what we're gonna do.

Then after that, it just takes time, you know?

And then we practice, we find like what dance matches the song.

Yeah, that's what we do.

So most of our dances are choreographed by Martin.

Martin's like our choreographer.

I'll bring the song, Martin choreograph on it, like he create a dance or we create it together.

But most of the songs we created, all the Black Beanz all together.

I started creating dancing back in 2020 when I moved to Akron, Ohio.

This group, the Black Beanz, it was not that dancing group.

It was like just 4 teenagers playing soccer.

And I came up with this idea of dancing because since, because most That's what we know, good at what we know, and yeah.

So I just told the boys, let's start.

So my mom once told me that since I was young, I used to love dancing.

So everywhere I go, it's just dancing, dancing, dancing.

They're self-taught and all their dance moves are original.

I started working with Tom about 3 years ago, and through that process I saw these guys kind of dancing and stuff and wanted to see how I could be involved, and we just kind of ended up managing these guys together.

I wanted to play soccer for a team called Inner City, and I texted Martin.

I'm like, I wanna, I wanna play soccer and I wanna join the team.

Then I joined the team, then later on I met everybody else from the team.

Then they're like, we have a dancing group, I want to know if you know how to dance.

I'm like, I know how to dance.

Then something like that, then I joined the Black Beanz as a dancer.

World of Dance, which is the top dance competition in the world, a couple hundred different groups.

So they all come to California and it's all different.

There's ballerinas to, you know, dancers like these guys, and they all compete, and the top prize is actually $1 million.

David and I brought them to a dance audition.

We sent in one of their videos and they qualified.

And the reason that we brought them there is we knew that technically they really needed to hear from judges what they needed in terms of competition as dancers, what they needed to know.

You know, in terms of staying together, transitions, that kind of thing.

They didn't have a lot of practice time.

The judges had to put them through.

They just said, this is so unique, these boys are so joyous, we gotta send them through.

World of Dance is— it was amazing.

And the experience of us going to California is so great.

I can't, I can't tell you how it was, but I can't It was amazing.

We won Crowd Favorites, the World of Dance.

We performed.

We were scared at first before we got on stage, but we became strong and we did our best.

They got the most applause in the audience of any dance group and the most people standing up to cheer them on.

So the Black Beanz, it's not just a bunch of seniors that come together to dance.

We're like, we're like a family, like brothers.

Where we can create a relationship and a family.

And I mean, if one of us need help, we're all there to support and everything.

Now we go from Akron to Cleveland's Near West Side, where a dance company celebrates the culture and traditions of West Africa.

The Djapo Cultural Arts Institute was founded in 2009 and is based in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood.

A couple years ago, we followed the company during the creation of a new dance.

This story is part of our special series, Behind the Scenes: Art Across Ohio.

We are here at the Pivot Center for Art, Music, Dance, and Expression.

Tonight we are starting a premiere piece called “Sandia of the Blood.” Company members know nothing about this piece.

Some of them may know a little bit if they've done some of our international travel voyages to West Africa.

But tonight, our dancers are going to get the opportunity to experience the music and the history and the folklore of Sandia before we start diving into some of the dance techniques.

Our musical director, Weedie Braimah, has gone to Mali numerous times, and he's like an encyclopedia when it comes to music, when it comes to folklore.

So he's going to be diving into the music.

The dancers have to learn the rhythms.

The musicians have to learn the rhythms.

Everybody learns the songs.

My main job is to focus on how this music elevates them as artists and also how the way that it elevates the audience.

We're preparing for a new piece.

It's a traditional folkloric piece that comes from Mali by way of the ethnic group of the Mandingue called Sandia.

The word Sandia means “new year” But it's done in honor of griots, which are the oral historians.

The word for griot in the Mandingue language is Djeli.

That's spelled D-J-E-L-I.

They're the ones who maintain the history, maintain the knowledge, maintain the culture, maintain the preservation of narratives that's created within certain villages and certain areas.

Once a month, specifically in Mali in West Africa, and people will go and the griots will show up and they will sing the praises of your family.

It's a communal event, so it's very lively.

My main goal is for them to at least understand the timing of the music and how it goes, the way the songs fit into the music, and how they're understanding the groove of the music.

They're going to get the history.

They're going to get the folklore.

They're going to get the musical foundations of Sandia.

They're going to learn the rhythms because that enhances their ability to dance it with happiness, with jubilee.

You see the the difference?

The word Djapo itself means “together” and that's part of our mission— bringing individuals together to learn about the art, music, dance, history, and folklore of Africa and throughout the diaspora.

If you want to learn about a people, if you want to learn about a culture, dive into the art.

It's almost there, I promise you.

If y'all can touch the floor just that one time on that first one.

Oh my goodness, we've made so much progress.

Our musical director has actually completed the orchestration of the music, so I have actually created the village.

You know, as we talked about before, Sandia is, is an event with families and, and people who live, you know, in a compound or within the same area.

So what I'm doing now is creating that celebratory village.

I'm recreating that space.

We're still kind of working through it in placement.

I haven't really placed individuals yet.

I'm just still in that place where I'm seeing where people, how they feel with the movements that's been given to them.

So that we have all the choreography that's set, so now it's just kind of like moving through space to see where those final moments will be.

My philosophy is no paper and pencil.

I want you to feel the music.

I want you to feel the song, understand the context and the foundational elements of the song, and capture that.

And through practice, it just happens and we get it.

I have to perform this for Dance Africa in Chicago.

I don't feel under the gun at all.

It's looking good.

It's just being able to bring the energy and to be able to show that for audiences, because that's my goal, is to make audiences feel something.

We are complete.

It is a finished piece.

I'm so excited, like it's really finished.

The music has its voice.

The dancers understand and has implemented what they've learned in into their body, and the song is now understood.

And the intent of what the song and the dance represents, the music represents, is now connected.

What I want people to take away from this, and the audience to take away from this, is the beauty of longevity, tradition, and speech.

Because the job of griot is to be able to speak and maintain.

I want them to take away a piece of history, a piece of Africa.

We've lost so much, so if you can get a piece of happiness, a piece of history, a piece of folklore, then we've done our jobs.

On the next “Applause”, we're making a fashion statement.

From vintage Dior to down-home Western wear, what hangs in the closet at the Kent State University Museum never goes out of style.

I always get someone saying, but, but where did you get all this from?

And I always say, our basement.

Then we go inside an old Cleveland Heights movie theater for a moving performance about the loss of a loved one.

All that and more on the next round of “Applause” Thanks for watching our “Applause” celebration of African culture here in Northeast Ohio.

I'm Ideastream's Kabir Bhatia, leaving you with either a shakeré recital by me or more music from our new friends, the Zerbo Brothers.

What do you guys think?

Zerbo Brothers!

Oh, okay.

Well, next time for this, maybe.

Here are the Zerbo Brothers with their song, “Will of God.” Production of Applause on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.