By Ruth Anne Maddox

Staff Writer

The energy in the room started slowly with a “Bah da bim!” built to a “Bah da bim! Bah da bim! Bah da bim! Bah! Bah!” and crescendoed with two dozen second-graders wildly drumming handmade djembe and oplenteny drums from Africa.

All the while, Francis Kofi was smiling — the sound was music to his ears.

Kofi, a master drummer and dance instructor from Ghana, was busy drumming up interest in music recently at Sweeney Elementary School in Shakopee as part of an artist-in-residence program through the Minnesota State Arts Board.

Francis Kofi is a master drummer and dance instructor from Ghana.As he motioned for the children to stop playing, the drumming came to a near-abrupt halt. Standing inside a circle of students with his arms crossed, he was nodding his head and still smiling as he announced, “That was fun!”

Explaining his smile, Kofi says, “I love what I am doing.”

The weeklong program had five classrooms of second-graders drumming and singing for 45 minutes each day before performing for family and fellow students on Friday afternoon.

Kofi wasn’t the only one with a smile, either. With a little encouragement from Kofi, the students smiled, too.

“I want you to smile,” Kofi said as the drummers drummed. “I want to see that you really enjoy what you are doing. I know you are playing but I don’t know if you are enjoying it unless I see you smile.”

So, they smiled while they drummed and smiled while they sang traditional African songs and they kept singing and smiling as they left the classroom at the end of the session. And, during the drumming, the children really smiled when Kofi danced along to the beat.

When the next class filed in, the second-graders quickly found a spot at one of the goblet-shaped drums covered in goat skin.

The only complaint?

Burning hands.

Seems all that stickless drumming heats up the hands — especially during those segments when the kids turn into “Animal” from Sesame Street.

And, even when they weren’t supposed to be playing, the children had a tough time keeping their hands off those drums.

“Let’s take it slowly and make sure we get the rhythm right,” Kofi said, gently correcting those who weren’t quite getting it.

“You’ve got to loosen up,” he told one little girl, whose hands were too stiff to make the right sounds against the stretched skin. He held her arm at the elbow and flapped the hand from the end of it then let go and told her to play.

“Aha, there you’re getting it,” he praised, again with the smile.

“Relax,” he told another student. “You’re too … (scrunching up his shoulders to indicate the tightness that he meant).”

When classroom teacher Krissy Purington noticed one boy wasn’t playing, she approached him and quietly asked why he wasn’t participating. He apparently didn’t think he was getting it, but she told him to try his best.

A few minutes later, Kofi was pointing at the boy, smiling and saying, “There you go,” and the boy continued to drum confidently during the rest of the class.

“You wish we do this every day, isn’t it?” Kofi asked the children. “After Friday, you’ll miss it.”

Although he is at the top of his beat as a master drummer, Kofi told the children that he still continues to learn.

“No matter how good you are, you still learn,” he said. “I learn every day … Teaching you, I am also learning because every time I teach, I get new ideas from you.”

Kofi’s goal with his program is to add an authentic and interactive cultural experience to the school curricula.

“By encouraging students to explore movement and sound in an intimate, hands-on manner, they will have an opportunity to learn a unique genre of music and dance, which promotes cultural awareness,” he wrote on his information page for the Minnesota State Arts Board Web site.

The week after he visited Sweeney, Kofi was conducting his program at Sun Path Elementary. When he’s not working with children as an artist in residence, Kofi serves as the director of Hayor Bibimma Dance Theatre in St. Paul. Prior to coming to the United States in 1995, Kofi also taught drumming and dance in Ghana.

Ruth Anne Maddox can be reached at (952) 345-6678 or rmaddox@swpub.com.