Festival Story:
Body music pioneer and Festival director Keith Terry’s vision of a global musical shindig goes beyond trading rhythms or belly-slap techniques. It’s about a cross-cultural conversation touching that visceral place that only the world’s oldest instrument can reach, as Terry was reminded recently while directing a workshop. “I was teaching a rhythm that involved touching the chest and then snapping, stepping, and singing. I wasn’t looking at the class; I was just listening,” says the 2008 Guggenheim Fellow, the first to earn such an award in body music. “It was beautiful so I let it go on for a while and when I turned around I saw most of the room in tears. There was something about the act of touching the chest that moved everyone. It was about the heart.”
11/23/09 >> 
