POTSDAM -- SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music will host a concert featuring the Crane West African Drum and Dance Ensemble on Friday, Dec. 1 at 7:30 p.m. in the Sara M. Snell Music Theater.

The Crane West African Ensemble will be joined by guest master drummer Martin Kwaku Kwaakye Obeng, an expert Ghanaian musician who brings a high level of musical mastery and rhythmic virtuosity to any performance.

The event will be lively and upbeat, with opportunities for the audience to participate and dance with the group at the end. This is a great event for people of all ages, including families with young children. The concert is free, and the public is invited to attend.

The concert will open with "Ayelevi," a song in the call and response form in the Ewe language, followed by "Kwadzo Ku," an agbadza war dance-drumming funeral song for a man who has died.

The ensemble will present Atumpan drumming and poetry, in which a pair of low- and high-pitched drums are played for dancing or to mimic the sounds of speech in the Akan language. This will be followed by a performance of Kpatsa, the music and dance of the Ga-Adangme ethnic group of southern coastal Ghana, which is used at funerals, festivals and as a coming-of-age song for girls. In the second dance-drumming piece of the evening, the ensemble will present "Gahu," an Egun dance that is usually played at special events like religious and harvest festivals or the installation of a chief.

Music education major Joseph Janover will then take to the stage to perform kpanlogo melodies on the marimba, and then improvise around them. The concert will close with the last dance-drumming piece, "Kpanlogo," a type of Ga recreational music from the capital region of Accra in Ghana. The music first developed during the 1950s independence movements and is used at funerals, festivals and parties.