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Collaboration. Curator, Acknowledgements & Liaison by Hugeaux (Father of ARTE MECCO). Text & Illustrations by Doris Green an ethnomusicologist, Fulbright scholar, creator of Greenotation. Epilogue by Dr. Sharon Diamond-Myrsten, MD a Brooklyn native, transplanted to Virginia. She earned a degree in English literature from the College of William and Mary, and a medical degree from Eastern Virginia Medical School.

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Collaboration - Hugeaux, Doris Green, Dr. Sharon Diamond,MD

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The GREENOTATION EXHIBITION of Doris Green - Part 1

Acknowledgements by Hugeaux. I first met Doris Green at Ohio University at the African Art Conference New Perspectives in African Performing and Visual Arts: First Biannual International Conference for Performers, Visual Artists, Educators, Teachers and Scholars.APRIL 18 -21, 2007 in Athens, Ohio. She was fascinated by my presentation on " The Importance of Documentation and The History of ARTE MECCO " and how I have used the Internet as a international educational / promotional apparatus. I mentored her upon publishing her first On-Line article. Thusly she has assisted me in creating a text for my ONLY On-Line web site Photography exhibition 2008 titled: CONCEPTION. Doris Green is truly an innovator of her time. Seeing a need in the Humanities and fully creating a dialogue for future historians to follow. I am privilege to have such a colleague in my realm of friends. This ONLY On-Line exhibition by Doris Green titled: GREENOTATION is another spoke in the wheel where contributors of the written document are being house in the Fine Arts. GREENOTATION is a topic in the Humanities. This ONLY On-Line exhibition: GREENOTATION shall surely preserve in history.

WHAT IS GREENOTATION(?)
© D. Green, 2001. Greenotation is an innovative system for writing music of percussion instruments. Doris Green created it as a codified system to teach drummers who could not read music. As you know the notes used in the western music system mean nothing to the average African drummer. Western notes are suitable for melodies, but not percussion music. The actions that occur in traditional African music of percussion instruments cannot be written with western musical notes. For example a written quarter note does not indicate whether the drum was struck with a half hand or the whole hand, whether the stick bounced off or remained in contact with the drumhead. All of these actions and nuances have to be notated, as they are part of African music, the way the sounds of percussion music are produced. Therefore a new system had to be created to accommodate the actions and sounds of percussion music.

As a youngster, I took music and dance as activities to keep me out of harm's way. Piano lessons were the norm of the time, but I desired to play the drums, but there was no place to study African drums. On the other hand ballet and tap were the traditional forms of dance offered, but I was always interested in dancing the way of my ancestors. I would receive the opportunity to dance the ways of my people in an annual recital at Carnegie Hall. Congo drummers were playing and a routine was choreographed. I was one of a group of dancers assigned to this new rendition of music/dance. When we started to dance, my movements were more energetic than the others and they stopped. I had the stage to myself and I created my choreography. My dance so impressed the teacher that I was granted a solo spot featuring the African dance expression. My routine was called Queen of the Jungle Mist.

Each year I had to create a new routine for the dance performance. But I would find out that the drummers could not read music and did not drum the same rhythm from one rehearsal to the next, which made it difficult for me to choreograph the routine. Therefore I had to create a way for the Congo drummers to be able to play the rhythms I desired. I was a teenager facing what seemed to be an insurmountable task creating a new music system specifically for percussion instruments. I quietly went about the task of creating a percussion notation system. I used my music background and what was available to me to lay the foundation of the percussion notation system. The sounds the drum emitted when played would lay the foundation upon which to erect the building bricks of the system. There were no studios or schools in my immediate or adjacent neighborhood where Congo drumming was taught. Also drumming was considered a male activity and few drummers were willing to contaminate their macho image by teaching females to drum. I would struggle to learn and gained much through being observant as no one could hinder my vision or hearing.

One of my early methods was done in a box with a circle in each corner = four circles to a box. The time signature for this was quarter time. The circles represented the drumhead. In each circle was a pattern that indicated what the drummer was to play. Each box represented one measure of music and was read clockwise starting at the top left. When the drummer finished the measure, he would repeat the measure until a different measure that indicated a change occurred. I used this system to notate the drum rhythms of Batakoto, which was one of the more popular dances of the fifties. This worked well for Batakoto as it was repetitive and only required a few changes. However, it did not work, as well for other African selections, such as Fanga that was the rave of the fifties. Therefore, I set out to improve the system to be able to add other instruments and to include dance.

One cannot forget that there is an inseparable relationship between African music and dance. In fact in Africa, no dance is performed without its music. I was making great strides in notating music for African drums, but had difficulty in writing the accompanying movements. My method of writing dance movements was beginning to disintegrate as they were written in word descriptions that became more difficult to read as time went by. In 1962, Labanotation, a system for writing dance movements would be offered in Brooklyn College for the first time. Without hesitation, I became an undergraduate student to study how to write dance. When reading the text, I found that my system and Labanotation shared many of the same principles. I would combine the two systems and continue to construct a more effective percussion notation system.

Copyright Hugeaux All Rights Reserved. Copyright Doris Green All Rights Reserved. Permission Granted. Copyright Dr. Sharon Diamond-Myrsten - MD All Rights Reserved. Permission Granted.