The African Students’ Organization is proud to present their annual African Night celebration this Friday, March 30. The event will take place in the MUB ballroom from 7 to 9:30 p.m. Festivities will include a delicious traditional meal, along with music, dancing, poetry and drama.
According to Edzordzi Agbozo, Vice President of the ASO and a second-year Ph.D. student in Rhetoric, Theory and Culture, the African Night celebration was instituted by the African Students’ Organization in 2001. Agbozo has been involved in organizing the event since 2016.
The ASO was established as an umbrella organization for all undergraduate and graduate students at Michigan Tech with ancestral ties to Africa, and African Night is a way for them to celebrate their cultural identities and to share their traditions with the wider community. Agbozo reported that current membership of the organization “is around 40 [students]… with members from Angola, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Jamaica, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, USA and Zimbabwe,” many of whom are involved in planning this year’s African Night. After many weekly meetings focused on planning, the event is finally coming together. Last Saturday, members of ASO went to East Lansing to buy traditional ingredients for the meals that will be featured at the event. “Get ready for some spices,” Agbozo said, enthusiastic about the cooking that he and others from the organization will be undertaking on the day of the event. The meal will include pepper soups from East and West Africa, rice, plantains, coleslaw, poundo and vegetable soup, grilled chicken from East Africa, West Africa and Jamaica, puff puff from Nigeria, and drinks including zobo, a drink made from roselle flower petals from East and West Africa.
African Night will feature two guest performers this year. One of these is the traditional dance and theatre troupe Bi-Okoto. Hailing from Cincinnati, Ohio, the Bi-Okoto Dance and Drum Theatre is a professional dance troupe that has toured and performed in 48 states, as well as internationally. According to Agbozo, the group’s expansive travels have included performances in South Korea, as well as at presidential welcomes in Italy, Germany, Bulgaria and France. Bi-Okoto was even selected for a five-week military tour of the United Kingdom, Norway, The Netherlands, Germany and Belgium in 2003 and 2004 by the United States Armed Forces Entertainment.
The second guest is Madafo, a traditional African storyteller and musician who uses the Griot style in his performances. “The Griots, in West African tradition, are the oral storytellers responsible for sustaining the history, philosophies, principles and values of their people,” Agbozo shared. Madafo has been performing throughout the United States for more than a decade, coordinating and performing at Kwanzaa celebrations, African Nights and Children Theatres. His mission is to “present the art forms of storytelling and music as viable teaching tools for the enhancement of human development mentally, physically and spiritually.”
“I look forward to African oral literature being given life in performance and together with all the energy that Africa exudes,” Agbozo said. “Our performers are professionals in what they do and have acquired international experience over the years, so I am certain that our audience will enjoy themselves…I look forward to our community’s patronage and affirmation of our communal spirit.”
Cost of attendance is $10 for students and $15 for non-students. To get tickets in advance, email aso-exec-20172018-l@mtu.edu. Tickets will also be sold at the door.
