Ghanaian highlife singer/composer, Mavis Sintim Aboagye, last week delighted music fans in the Italian city of Palermo with a magnetic stagecraft with musicians from Spain, Italy, Portugal and Denmark.
Performing alongside Trigmatic (vocals), Fatima Pérez Robledo (piano), Miguel Almeida (bass), Miguel Ruiz de Elvira (guitar), Helene Tungelund (vocals), Cecilia Begueria (violin) Iris Jugo (cello), Peter Suwalski (drums) and Pablo Barianga Blanquez (keyboard) as part of the final seminar of ‘Project BOEMI’, she appeared to sing from the bottom of her heart.
With a voice that cleaved through the air like a sparrow, Sintim Aboagye dished out a number highlife compositions as well as old evergreen tunes that drew cheers from the audience, who welcomed the multi-cultural mix of the band.
The seminar, among other things, dilated on media skills and their diffusion among the youth as well as cultivating and valorising the practice of reciprocal maieutic approach in the field of music which would be employed as a technique for youth empowerment and social transformation.
BOEMI (Building Our Employment Skills Through Music Investigations & New Media) is an innovative capacity building project involving five partners – Centro per lo Sviluppo Creativo ‘Danilo Dolci’ (Italy), Crossing Borders (Denmark), IYEC (Ghana), Jeunesse En Action ‘GNO FAR’ (Senegal) and Asociación para la Integración y Progreso de las Culturas Pandora (Spain).
The project aims at promoting transnational non-formal learning mobility activities among different countries, targeting less privileged youth / youth workers in a bid to increase their competences and active participation in society.
BOEMI also aspires to grow youth self-esteem and a feeling of belonging to society, increasing the confidence in their ‘unique selling points’ and transforming their interest in music into employable skills.
From John Owoo, Palermo, Italy