’Isioma Williams ANNUAL TRADITIONAL DRUMS CLINIC’’

‘’Isioma Williams ANNUAL TRADITIONAL DRUMS CLINIC’’

This is a humanitarian project; an Artistic yearly teaching conference in which experts in the field of the art of traditional drums and drumming are invited, to give both theory and practical lectures to amateur and professional drummers.

The clinic is aimed at strengthening and sustaining originality and quality through the generations of drummers.

Majority of the drummers in this era just want to hit the membrane for the sake of it. Although, this may be blamed on the nation’s negligence on issues concerning our Art and Culture, but on the other hand, the blame goes too to the artist and also the elders in the art, because, if the artist had diligently searched for the real thing and have learnt original rhythm and technique, it would have given him/her a “Pedestal of survival”. Though, it would only have required lots of sacrifice which the new generation of drum artistes is not willing to make. And likewise, the blame goes to the experts, elders who have gone before this present generation of drum artistes because they failed to pass on the originality, quality and experience they had.

There is a few or no training centre or an avenue for drum artistes to be really trained the actual things, rather they assume a counterfeit of the original thereby loosing authenticity. Furthermore, drummers are now forming theatre groups, teaching and grooming younger ones in their groups and most of our public/private schools. So they keep passing on the false that they know and if these acts should continue to the subsequent generation, originality and quality would have gone down the drain or filtered off as generations pass by. 

In order to avoid the inferior act of drumming languages to be passed down to the pupils and as well loosing the authenticity of our Culture, it is necessary to empower, educate and support the current generation of drummers through workshops and seminars of this nature.

In a way to restore originality, quality and the real and total essence of the drum and drum language, this edition of “Isioma Williams Annual Traditional Drums Clinic” tagged ‘’CORRECTIONS’’ which holds on the 29^th and 30^th of March at the House of Dance studios, Artiste Village (N.C.A.C.) National Theatre Iganmu Lagos Nigeria from 12pm prompt will feature Competent and experienced personnel who have extensive knowledge of the act of drumming;

1.      Chief Yemi adeyemi, the BEMBA of Zambia, aka ‘baba Suara’ of the super story fame (Story series: Oh Father Oh Daughter!). He is an acclaimed musicologist, who is always particular about the diction and accent of the traditional drum language.

2.      Mr. Eliel Otote popularly known in Nollywood as an Actor, Director and Writer. He is an ethnomusicologist and dance anthropologist. He is a scholar of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and the Royal Schools of Music, London. Editor of ARTS & CULTURE Magazine. He is the Director of Studies, ARTS WORKSHOP-a training facility for Nollywood practitioners.

RESOURCE PERSON: Isioma Williams

TITLE: Initiator/Visionary

MOBILE: 08023535184, 08062677191

MAIL: isiomawilliams@hotmail.com

ADDRESS: Gongbeat studio, (artiste’ village) National Council for Arts and Culture, National Theatre Annex, Iganmu Lagos, Nigeria.

ISIOMA WILLIAMS is a total theatre artist who can be consulted on all aspects of the art. He is the Nigerian Consultant for Badejoarts based in United Kingdom, Coordinator of Gongbeat Productions, former Chairman of the Dance Guild of Nigeria Lagos Chapter (EkoGOND) and Founder/Director of Drumsview Concept.

ISIOMA Williams is into artistic productions and believes in the philosophical theory of humanitarianism which he tends to achieve through the company he founded.

                                       

                                 

(instructor) Chief Yemi Adeyemi                         (instructor) Eliel Otote

 

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FIRST HIV CURE IN THE WORLD

Scientists believe a little girl born with HIV has been cured of the infection.
She's the first child and only the second person in the world known to have been cured since the virus touched off a global pandemic nearly 32 years ago.
Doctors aren't releasing the child's name, but we know she was born in Mississippi and is now 2 1/2 years old — and healthy. Scientists presented details of the case Sunday at a scientific conference in Atlanta.
The case has big implications. While fewer than 130 such children are born each year in the U.S., an estimated 330,000 children around the world get infected with HIV at or around birth every year, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
And while many countries are striving to prevent these mother-to-child infections, many thousands of children will certainly get infected in coming years.
Until now, such children have been considered permanently infected. Specialists thought they needed lifelong antiviral drugs to prevent HIV from destroying their immune system and killing them via AIDS.
The Mississippi child's surprising cure came about from happenstance — and the quick thinking of a University of Mississippi pediatric infectious disease specialist, Hannah Gay.
"The child came to our attention as a high-risk exposure to maternal HIV," Gay tells Shots. Her mother hadn't had any prenatal care, she says, so didn't get antiviral drugs during pregnancy.
The fact that the newborn tested positive for HIV within 30 hours of birth is a sign she was probably infected in utero, HIV specialists say.
Gay decided to begin treating the child immediately, with the first dose of antivirals given within 31 hours of birth. That's faster than most infants born with HIV get treated, and specialists think it's one important factor in the child's cure.
In addition, Gay gave higher-than-usual, "therapeutic" doses of three powerful HIV drugs rather than the "prophylactic" doses usually given in these circumstances.
Over the months, the baby thrived, and standard tests could detect no virus in her blood, which is the normal result from antiviral treatment.

Enlarge image

HIV particles, yellow, infect an immune cell, blue.

NIAID_Flickr

Then, her mother stopped bringing the child in for checkups.
"The baby's mom was having some life changes, that's about all I can say," Gay reports. "I saw her at 18 months, and then after that did not see her for several months. And we were unable to locate her for a while."
Gay enlisted the help of Mississippi state health authorities to track down the child. When they found her, the mother said she had stopped giving the child antiviral drugs six or seven months earlier.
At that point, Gay expected to find that the child's blood was teeming with HIV. But to her astonishment, tests couldn't find any virus.
"My first thought was, 'Oh, my goodness, I've been treating a child who's not actually infected,' " Gay says. But a look at the earlier blood work confirmed the child had been infected with HIV at birth. So Gay then thought the lab must have made a mistake with the new blood samples. So she ran those tests again.
"When all those came back negative, I knew something odd was afoot," Gay says. She contacted an old friend, Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga at the University of Massachusetts, who has been studying pediatric HIV/AIDS for two decades.
That was last August. Since then, Luzuriaga's lab and labs in San Diego, Baltimore and Bethesda, Md., have run ultra-sensitive tests on the baby's blood.
A couple of tests have intermittently found pieces of HIV DNA and RNA, but no evidence that the virus is actively replicating in the child's cells.
Luzuriaga tells Shots this amounts to what's called a "functional cure."
She says that "means control of viral replication and lack of rebound once they come off antiretroviral medications."
The only other such case known to AIDS researchers is the so-called Berlin patient — Timothy Brown of San Francisco. But his treatment involved a bone marrow transplant in Germany — essentially, he was given the immune system of a donor who's genetically resistant to HIV. That's not something that can be easily duplicated.
By contrast, the Mississippi child's cure involved readily available medications.
Luzuriaga says researchers believe they have ruled out other possible reasons for the unexpected cure. For instance, the mother did not have a less virulent strain of HIV. And the child does not have known mutations in her immunity genes that confer protection against HIV.
"We think it was that very early and aggressive treatment," she says, "that curtailed the formation of viral reservoirs" — that is, hideouts for the virus within the child's immune cells.
Previous research indicates that once these hideouts are established, it can take 70 years or more of steady, three-drug antiviral treatment to eliminate them.
Luzuriaga says the toddler's cure has electrified researchers searching for an HIV cure.
"It's exciting to us," she says. "Because if we were able to replicate this, I think it would be very good news."
Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University Medical School, who presented the case at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, calls the Mississippi cure "definitely a game-changer."
"This case is sort of the inspiration and provides the rationale to really move forward," Persaud tells Shots.
Kevin Robert Frost of the Foundation for AIDS Research, or amfAR, agrees that the finding will stimulate a lot of further work. The group helped fund studies to determine if the Mississippi toddler is really cured.
"If this approach is proven effective, we could dramatically change the way children born with HIV are treated," he tells Shots.
Plans are under way to mount studies to see if early, aggressive treatment can cure other children of HIV. But Persaud says it will be awhile before researchers can figure out when it might be safe to stop antiviral drugs deliberately.
This research will undboubtedly be high-priority, given the birth of nearly 1,000 HIV-infected newborns a day in the developing world.
AIDS researchers foresee a day when the same treatment could give many of these children a lifetime free of toxic and costly antiviral drugs.