In partnership, Catherine Veilleux and Pascal Gaudette import some of the best djembes from Guinea and organize percussion workshops with recognized masters.
| Pascal Gaudette | Catherine Veilleux |
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| For more than 10 years, Pascal Gaudette has been exploring his passion for the djembe, by combining an active artistic practice with social science research.
Pascal has oriented his musical craft towards the Guinean style of drumming and the djembe/dunun ensemble. His teachers include such masters as Famoudou Konaté, M’Bemba Bangoura, Billy Nankouma Konaté, Alassane Dartagnan Camara and Michael Markus. He has spent a total of six months in Guinea. He was a founding member and joint artistic director of the Yayé percussion ensemble from 2002 to 2004, and has for many years been playing for Guinean dance classes, either as accompanyist, dununfola or soloist. In 2007, Pascal completed a master’s degree in anthropology at Université de Montréal, exploring some of the processes and actors of the globalization of the djembe drum. He is now pursuing, at McGill University, a PhD in anthropology whose focus is on the drumming and dancing diaspora, on those West African artists who follow a path of adventure and exile in order to teach their craft to students abroad. He has presented his research in graduate seminars, introductory anthropology and ethnomusicology classes, as well as international anthropology conferences.
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Catherine has a university degree in education and she learned West-African percussion and dance from different master drummers in Canada, the United-States and Guinea Africa. She teaches West-African percussion since 2005 and sells djembe drums since 2008 because her students were playing on bad drums and they were asking for quality drums like hers which were unavailable. The Wula drums were the best drums she could find and started importing them from Guinea.
From 2002 to 2009, Catherine was a founder, artistic director and artist for Yayé. She is also a co-founder and djembe soloist for Cobra du Mandingue, a professionnal drum and dance company since 2009. Catherine works with several local and international musicians and contributes to the development of African dance and drumming in the Ottawa area through her teaching, performances and activities organized during the year but her real strength lies in the workshops she teaches as she combines her teaching experience to her passionate artist side to offer a unique experience into the Guinean percussion world!
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Catherine is sensational, an inspirational teacher, I want to do more
