As far as most Dartmouth students know, the only thing that African and Asian music have in common is that they are foreign and “not Western.”
There is little understanding of the polyrhythm beats of African music or the multi-tonal cacophony of traditional Asian music. Given how little of this type of music we hear around New England, this state of unawareness is unsurprising.

On February 19th, the World Music Percussion Ensemble sought to remedy that. That night Spaulding Auditorium was filled with the drumming of djembe and pipa—along with a variety of other drums and keyboard. The program of the night included Iya Ni Wura, Dounobah, as well as offerings such as Written on the Wind and Blue Pipa.

The entire ensemble performed well, but the stars of the night were the featured guests on the pipa, Min Xiao-Fen and Si Jie Loo ‘12 who has studied the drums for years. Min Xiao-Fen was amazingly dexterous on the pipa, filling the entire room with multiple lines of melodies that sounded more like an entire Asian symphony of zithers.

Amusingly, she cried out some unintelligible word over and over for “My Friend” which she later explained was her dog.

One of the odder performances of the night was a solo by Ms. Min where her performance was backed by a “kinetic painting” by Norman Perryman. Although the music was interesting, the kinetic painting itself seemed like a child playing on an old overhead projector, leaving the audience confused about the purpose of the song and the significance of the painting.

Less abstractly, Si Jie Loo was incredibly energetic, moving between different drums and acting as the driving force behind many of the night’s pieces. Matsuri and Mukala-Mukala were especially impressive. Matsuri, a Japanese “Shinto temple song” was introduced by Hafiz Shabazz (the ensemble director) as a piece that Si Jie personally brought to the group. Both pieces were filled with energy and made the audience move to the powerful beat of African drums.

Overall, it is difficult to say how much appreciation the performance brought to African and Asian music.

The audience was certainly entertained, but the turnout was somewhat disappointing, with only about half of Spaulding filled.

However, one cannot fault the performers given their energy and expertise. The music was enjoyable, and the Upper Valley experienced the strings and drums of Asia and Africa in one evening—a rare occurrence indeed.

Warning: the details of the sexual violence against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo given in this article are disturbing.

“Yes, it’s difficult to hear about,” said playwright and activist Eve Ensler in an interview with The Women’s Media Center, “but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hear.” The 2009 V-DAY spotlight is not a story of Valentine’s Day love. It addresses the prevalent rape of women by armed groups in an Eastern Congo conflict that has been supposedly “over” since’99.Most people prefer to avoid hearing tales about thousands of women being gang raped, developing fistula, contracting HIV, or having gun barrels and sticks shoved into their vaginas. But these aren’t just tales: they are the true stories of real women. In order to put a stop to practices that have now become commonplace, we must listen and take action.

The’99 Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement officially ended a conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that involved several African nations, a conflict that developed as an outgrowth of the mid-1990s Rwandan genocide. However, foreign troops remain in the Congo today, as do numerous armed groups representing different foreign and domestic interests, as well as ethnic groups. The unending conflict has displaced over two million civilians, caused the deaths of another 2.5 million and the rape of over 200,000 women and girls—taking only the years 1998-2001 under consideration.

Even these horrifying numbers don’t accurately represent the conflict’s true devastation: estimating the true number of women, girls, and boys raped and sexually assaulted is nearly impossible. For fear of being stigmatized or ostracized, victims keep silent about their attacks and refuse to seek medical treatment.

Sexual violence against women and girls has been committed by every armed group in the Eastern Congo, opportunistic bandits, and even a few U.N. troops. Survivors who have sought medical treatment and support tell similar stories: Many were attacked while working in the fields, or kidnapped in looting raids on their villages. Many were subjected to rape more than once, and by multiple men.

Twenty-year-old Generose N., from Kabare told Human Rights Watch her story:
I was on the road from Kalonge to Mudaka. I had money that my fiance gave me to buy a wedding dress. A soldier attacked me on the road. He said things in Kinyarwanda. [Later she said he was Hutu]. He took me away to a place in the forest where there were three other soldiers. They roughed me up. This was August 8 [2001] and they kept me until August 25 and each one of them raped me every day.

This is a far too common story: 3,500 incidents of rape were reported in North and South Kivu (in Eastern Congo) during the first six months of 2008 alone. Fifty percent of the survivors were under the age of five. In the aftermath of the rape, survivors are stigmatized by their community, rejected by their loved ones, and often become pregnant, contract HIV, or develop fistulas. Fistulas are ruptures that appear between the vagina, bladder, and/or rectum, which cause extreme pain and frequently interfere with women’s ability to control her urination and defecation. They can be repaired with a costly surgery—but few women have the ability to travel to a hospital, while underfunded medical centers are already overwhelmed by the treatment of the small percentage of rape victims who do come to them.

Even though rape has unfortunately often been utilized a tool of war, the figures reported in the DRC are of an unprecedented magnitude. Armed groups have used rape to disable community and thereby win and maintain control over territories they claim. After violent rape, many survivors are unable to give birth, and they are often turned away by their fiances and husbands; this, in addition to mass looting and killing, disrupts individual families and whole communities.

I wish I could end this article on a positive note, but I’m afraid that is virtually impossible. Perhaps hope can be found in the increasing numbers of Congolese women now telling their stories to the world in hopes of preventing these acts from reoccurring. More hope might be found in the arrest of Congolese Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, accused of war crimes by numerous human rights groups, in Rwanda earlier this year. His arrest could possibly lead to the punishment of more perpetrators of sexual violence.

A real solution to the crisis must involve the leadership and participation of many nations and the U.N. to demobilize armed groups, achieve a peace settlement, punish war crime offenders, and prevent rape. Hopefully, the awareness raised by the international V-Day spotlight will inspire a renewed effort to stop sexual violence in the Eastern Congo and to end the persistent and devastating conflict.

THE MASTHEAD
Editor-in-Chief: Paul Lintilhac
Publisher: Ted Wojcik
Executive Editor: Zach De

Last Saturday at the Hop, I watched A Serious Man—the sixth movie I’ve watched out of the ten nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

It was a good movie, simply said. I enjoyed the movie even more than Up in the Air—another dark comedy—which was well-written, but unfortunately plagued with obvious moral judgments of its protagonist’s lifestyle. The acting in A Serious Man was definitely the best of all the Best Picture nominees I’ve seen so far.

A Serious Man is full of dark, almost absurd humor told on a subtle, even keel. You’ll find the plot quite familiar if you are familiar with the story of Job in the Bible. Larry, the protagonist, is a good, normal, serious man who’s suddenly plagued with troubles at home and at work.

Some seemingly strange bits are directly tied to Job and other Bible stories. Larry’s monitoring of a beautiful naked woman from his rooftop echoes the story of David and Bathsheba; a random tornado at the end of the film mirrors God’s final answer to Job’s laments over his fate.

Not only did I appreciate these Biblical references, but I also appreciated being immersed in the Jewish-American landscape of the 1960s. It was a rare depiction that was done well—artfully, eloquently and certainly not stereotypically. The landscape felt real, updating an old parable and bringing Job into the twentieth century.

Like Job in the Bible, Larry wonders why Hashem seems to be punishing him unfairly. But the story was also a nice touch on a very human theme that anyone with a notion of a god or morality could understand: why do bad things happen to good people?

The award-winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen have done it again. I’ll be disappointed if this movie doesn’t win Best Picture. I heartily recommend A Serious Man.