Seeing/Hearing South Africa: Penn Students at the National Arts Festival

This grant funded travel funding for students registered in Music 56, a class that starts at Penn in the spring but takes students to the National Arts Festival in South Africa for two weeks in the summer. Seeing/Hearing Africa is a both a face to face and short term study abroad class mostly for Penn undergraduates. It begins with a semester long introduction to South African politics and performance history, travel to South Africa, attendance of the festival with conversations about issues and the arts at the beginning or end of each day of the eleven day festival, extends into a tour of one of the neighboring townships whose history tells the story of twentieth century black South African struggles and triumphs, a visit to the International Library of African Music, the largest of its kind in the world, and ends with a substantial reflection paper once students return home.