Michaela Gaffke / Winonan

Students will have the unique opportunity to hear the drums of Ghana on campus this week when a world known drummer visits campus.

As part of the International Music Series, Winona State will be hosting Sowah Mensah to play music from Ghana, West Africa on Thursday, Oct. 13 in the Performing Arts Center Recital Hall at 6 p.m.

Sowah has taught music in Ghana and Nigeria, and is a music professor at Macalester College and the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.

Sowah directs the African Music Ensemble at both schools, and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Sowah is also a composer and active in his performance career.

Student coordinator Kayleen Berwick said that last year, Sowah brought his family to play as well.

Catherine Schmidt, music professor at Winona State said how the performers talk about their culture, and bring students up on stage to teach them a pattern and let them play. Many African cultures have music that has a tonal language, meaning the pitches have different meanings.

All these artists are the best representations of their cultures in the area, according to Schmidt.

The International Music Series started around 20 years ago, with a 14 to 15 concert series in the fall, Schmidt said, now it is a five concert series.

“Basically, it’s a concert series of world music artists,” Schmidt said. “It’s one thing to learn about this music and hear about it and see it in the video, it’s another thing to have a real life person from the culture.”

The musicians will ask, ‘does Winona know how lucky they are?’ Schmidt said, because you can pay fairly decent prices to see these artists.

“There aren’t many places in the United States to hear the top musicians from China, India and Africa all in one semester,” Schmidt said.

Remaining concerts for this semester are Calle Sur with music of South America on Nov. 3, and Ojibwe musician Lyz Jaakola will perform Anishinaabe music on Nov. 17.

All these artists are world famous, they’re all so humble, Berwick said.

“It expands your ears,” Schmidt said.

You will see connections between different cultures and your own, and see different ways of playing music, Schmidt said.

They will talk about how they learn music differently in their culture, and it is so interesting, a lot of them have educational components to their shows, Berwick said.

“It is a truly distinctive, unique thing that we have gotten to do for this campus,” Schmidt said.

The concerts are open to students and the public with free admission.

-By Michaela Gaffke