Performing with Kofi Mawuko

I've been having a blast performing weekends at the Tennessee Aquarium with my friend Kofi Mawuko. Kofi is a native of Ghana which is located on the southern coast of the West African bulge. He's a master of the djembe and kpalogo drums and has lived in Chattanooga for about six years now. Every time we crossed paths we talked about how much fun it would be to combine my hammer dulcimer with his African rhythms. Since we're both full time musicians you'd think that would be an easy matter, but our performance schedules never seemed to line up, that is until now.

From our first day street performing at the Tennessee Aquarium we knew we'd stumbled upon something exciting and unique. After every song, all improvised for the most part, people asked if they could purchase our CDs and wanted to know how long we'd been playing together. Our CD? What a great idea! We headed straight to the studio to capture some of our ideas while they were still fresh. I'm happy to say that we're making great progress and hope to announce the CD release in early July. I'll try to get some pictures of our performance this weekend so I can post them next week.

In addition to recording sessions and performances with Kofi, my attention has been on the upcoming Chattanooga Dulcimer Festival which is now just 10 days away. Click the train at the top of this page for the latest CDF info.

A couple of weeks ago I drove down to Yanni's studio in Florida to work on my parts in his upcoming CD/DVD. The recording sessions were smooth sailing and I was finished in no time. From what I saw and heard, this is going to be a great video. I don't have any concrete news as to when it will be released but I'm guessing we'll see it this fall. ¶ 7:31 AM