Joe Clifford, outreach manager at the Hop, sets out to make connections between the outstanding performers that visit Dartmouth through the Hop and the student body that may not otherwise take the time to see them. Through hands-on, experiential learning, students gain access to highly acclaimed artists without leaving the comfort of home or the classroom, Clifford said.
"It's all about that transformative moment when a student in an econ class realizes that a musician from Bali opened up a whole new world to him or her," Clifford said.
The Visiting Artist Residency Program brings about 45 artists to students up close and personal each year. Residencies like the one currently involving the Qawwali Masters look to engage students with the arts in somewhat unconventional ways. A dinner following the event in Brace Commons afforded students the opportunity to engage in a dialogue with performers.
On Wednesday a theater group from Uzbekistan, Ilkhom Theatre, will work with a linguistics class, and a spectrogram will record their voices for further analysis.
But it isn't just the students who reap the fruits of the outreach department's labor. There are over 200 events sponsored by the department, and while most of the programming is directed towards students, the Hop's outreach programs are often appropriate and engaging for a range of age groups. Monday's demonstration attracted students and senior citizens alike.
The Qawwali Masters' performance, much like the outreach program itself, was really about connections. The evening started with the traditional American folk spiritual music of the Shakers, who used only a few musical tactics: a capella harmonies and short introductions on the recorder.
Adam Nayyar of Pakistan's National Council on the Arts noted the similarities between two art forms that appear very different from the outset. The Shaker Singers sang in English with little instrumental accompaniment while the Qawwali Masters used the words of 12th- and 13th-century Sufi poets as well as brand new lyrics to express themselves. Percussion instruments played a pivotal role in the Pakistani traditional performance, another distinct differentiation. Despite the language barrier, the overall message remained similar.
"The spirit is the same -- that of uniting through love," Nayyar said.
The rhythms that followed Nayyar's introduction proved that one does not need to understand the words of a song to feel the emotion behind it. Through universally understood actions like clapping, the Qawwali Masters displayed the similarities between the two cultures.
While cross-cultural connections may seem blatant once they've already been made, the process of establishing the links represents a more arduous task for the creative team at the outreach department.
Joe Clifford looks at his job as matchmaking -- finding the classes with the curricula that may be enhanced by the performers that come to the Hop and successfully pitching a classroom immersion to professors. With 10-week terms already putting pressure on professors to teach an overwhelming amount of material, it can be tough to persuade them to set aside additional class time, even for such a rare experience.
And the job does not finish when the event does, either. Though preparations may take a lot of time and present many difficulties, the outreach department must constantly evaluate the success of the programs and the ways to improve future affairs. Clifford stressed that his department always accepts the possibilities of new ideas for the direction of the program. He wants to find ways to extend the arts to the Greek system and even residential spaces. Using a facility like Brace Commons emphasizes the desire to bring the arts to students in their home environments.
"The idea is to reach the non-arts students -- the ones who only come to the Hop to check their mail," Clifford said.
The Qawwali Masters will perform in Rollins Chapel tonight at 8 p.m.
