(b Jirapa, Ghana, June 22, 1958). Ghanaian xylophone maker, player, and teacher. Born into a family of gyilli makers and players in northwest Ghana, Doozie began playing at six years of age. When he was 12 his father taught him to make his first gyilli and he was a practised maker by age 15. After secondary school Doozie moved to Accra to become a xylophonist with the Ghana Dance Ensemble. He was also an instructor at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon. Among other appointments, he has performed with the National SO Ghana and has been associated with the Institute of African Studies and the music and performing arts departments of the University of Ghana. In 1990 he established a workshop to produce xylophones; he made the xylophones used in the Broadway production of The Lion King. He has also restored instruments in museum collections. He continues to teach and perform and is managing director of Dagarti Arts and Music in Accra and a member of the Arts Council of Ghana. He is also involved in promoting fair trade practices. Doozie’s xylophone bars—from eight to 18 for each instrument—are made of aged, fire-dried planks of wood from male shea trees. Gourd resonators are affixed under the bars, which are tied to the curved frame. The tips of the wooden beaters are padded with rubber recycled from tyres....
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Doozie, Christopher
Laurence Libin
Article
Kalanduyan, Danongan
Mary Talusan
(Sibay )
(b Datu Piang, Philippines, May 1, 1947). Master musician and teacher of kulintang, of Filipino birth. Kalanduyan is a respected artistic figure in Filipino communities around the United States and Canada for promoting Kulintang , an indigenous musical heritage predating Spanish and American colonization of the Philippines. Before settling in San Francisco, California, he was raised in the fishing village of Datu Piang, the artistic center of the Maguindanao people on the island of Mindanao, Philippines. As a young man, he won island-wide competitions on the gandingan (set of four large hanging knobbed gongs). As an undergraduate at Mindanao State University–Marawi, he toured the Far East with the Darangen Cultural Troupe. He was an artist-in-residence at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle under a Rockefeller Foundation grant in 1976, and graduated from UW with a MA in ethnomusicology in 1984. In 1995 Kalanduyan became the first artist of Filipino descent to be awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. Kalanduyan has taught and performed with nearly all of the ...
