Reflections on Africa’s Deep Impact on Diasporic Cultural Production w/ Bro Ah

Africa World Now Project

Note: This conversation with Brother Ah was the first program produced for AWNP Radio. It aired as the inaugural program in 2016. Brother has joined the ancestors today (May 31 2020). We will need to hear him speak with us on a higher frequency. He was, is and will continue to be.
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I recently had the pleasure to sit down with one of our scribes…Bro. Ah…to Reflect upon Africa’s Deep Influence on Diasporic Cultural Production.

Robert Northern (aka Brother Ah) is the musical director of the World Music Ensemble and The Sounds of Awareness Ensemble. He specializes in Wind Instruments, African Drums, and Percussions.

Brother Ah constantly seeks to celebrate the emergence of a world culture, while retaining the distinct expressions of each cultural style in it, paying particular attention to African inflections.
Brother Ah extensive experience spans the musical field. He was the musical director of “Sounds of Awareness”. A musical collective that utilizes music, dance, poetry and the sounds of nature to inspire and raise individual levels of consciousness. The group also produces music for meditation, relaxation and healing.

He also founded The World Community School of Music in 1992 and offers instrumental and vocal music classes to students of all ages from.

As a lecturer and educator, he has taught at public and private schools in New York and Washington, DC, as well as Brown University in Rhode Island (9 years), Dartmouth College in New Hampshire (3 years), Talladega College (Alabama).

Brother Ah is a performer, educator, lecturer, composer and arranger both in Western and non-Western traditions. He has composed and directed numerous extended works including “Ode to Creation”, The Forces of Nature” and “Tribute to the Ancestors”.

Brother Ah, as a French horniest, has played and recorded with musical greats including, but not limited to, Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard, Sun Ra, Dizzy Gillespie, Eric Dolphy, Max Roach, John Lewis, to name a few.

His classical performances include the New York Metropolitan Opera (stage band), Radio City Music Hall Orchestra; symphony orchestras in Vienna, Austria, West Germany and Broadway Theatre orchestras.

He studied at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, the Vienna State Academy in Vienna, Austria, and he is a graduate of Howard University in Washington, DC.

This is Africa World Now Project…I am James Pope.

[Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!]

Enjoy the program…