2015 Campaign Update

What is going on with l’École Fula Flute?

24 Nov. 2015

The purpose of the current fundraiser is to create working capital so that the Centre Tyabala de Guinea, the organization which is hosting our program (l’École Fula Flute), can have reliable, albeit modest, revenue to hire teachers, get supplies, food and other essential things, to afford them some breating room to allow peace of mind for kids to pursue and deepen their studies. 

Thanks to our generous donors we have so far raised $1500 on our way to hopefully $3000. All the money we will raise will be distributed out on a monthly basis through the coming year. Our goal this time is modest so I encourage everybody to give a little. All U.S. donations are tax-deductible thanks to the support of the Creative Music Foundation.

L’Ecole Fula Flute is a concept and a project in development. The initial idea was to use my invention, the chromatic tambin,* as a culturally appropriate door for Guineans to access music literacy and a world of knowledge. 

As fortune would have it, early on, when I was looking to find a group of students in Guinea to try this idea with, I was steered to an alternative arts-in-education program at the Centre Tyabala de Guinée and their talented and wonderful students. 

During the three week pilot session in 2013, I found that the children were responsive and enthusiastic about learning flute therefore my idea was viable. Then after our successful Kickstarter campaign, I spent the four well-documented months with them there in 2014 and we made great progress both in flute playing and musical literacy. 

The difficulties in pursuing this project are two-fold: funding and living conditions. I had hoped that our story would have generated some notoriety, which in turn, would have helped create financing opportunities but, other than for the significant exception I previously mentioned, that did not occur. Secondly, the four months I spent in Guinea last time were very taxing so I discovered that it is difficult for me to be there for extended periods of time. 

On the positive side, the great Mamady Mansare, God Bless Him, has been teaching our students and they are playing flute fantastically well. So it appears our program has taken some life and is progressing despite the hurdles. 

If you can, please help our project. 

Thank you and a Happy Thanksgiving.
Sylvain

* The chromatic tambin can play the complete chromatic scale as opposed to the diatonic scale produced by the traditional Guinean tambin (a.k.a. Fula flute). For non-musicians, think of the piano keyboard, the seven white keys represent a diatonic scale (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si) whereas the chromatic scale also includes the five black keys (do#, re#, fa#, sol#, la#). Rendering the tambin fully chromatic opens it to myriad scales and musical colors from all over the world.