Fatoumata Diawara Comes to Ware Center Today

Fatoumata Diawara presents a joyous mix of the vibrant and understated, with songs about love, politics and empowerment today, April 8 at 7:30 pm at the Ware Center located at 42 N. Prince Street, Lancaster. Inspired by Wassoulou tradition, jazz, and blues, Fatoumata Diawara has created her own unique contemporary folk sound, with a distinctly African spin to the concept of the female singer-songwriter. This concert is funded in part through the Mid Atlantic Tours program of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

At the center of the music is Diawara's warm, affecting voice; spare, rhythmical guitar playing; and gorgeously melodic songs that draw powerfully on her own often troubled experience. Born in Côte d'Ivoire, raised in Mali, now based in Paris, Diawara has had a life covering a whole gamut of contemporary African experience: fighting parental opposition to her artistic ambitions and the cultural prejudice faced by women throughout Africa, winning success as an actress in film and theater, before finding soaring in the medium she was always destined to make her own music.

Diawara's concerts are filled with inspiration and hope-especially poignant today as a new civil war erupts in her homeland of Mali, where in some places, music has been banned. Recently, PBS interviewed Fatoumata Diawara and spoke with her about the civil unrest, conflict, and division in Mali and her efforts to keep the music alive. Link to interview titled "Bringing Mali's music back from exile": http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/bringing-malis-music-back-exile/.

Tickets for this performance are $18 general, $15 senior, and $5 student. Tickets can be purchased by calling 717-871-7600 or visit www.ArtsMU.com. Tickets can also be purchased in person at the Ticket Office located in the Student Memorial Center on Millersville's campus, or the Ware Center, located at 42 N. Prince Street, in Lancaster. Doors open one hour before each show for ticket sales, subject to availability.

The Millersville University Visual and Performing Arts Season is made possible by support from Season Partner Rodgers & Associates and Season Sponsors: Aussie and the Fox, Clipper Magazine, Hagelgans & Veronis, The Hotel Lancaster, 12:34 MicroTechnologies, Ann B. Barshinger, Peggy Neff, Mary S. Burton & Laurent Horne, Linda Holman Marcks, and Mary Kearns & Jon Walker. Media Sponsors are Fig Lancaster Magazine and Fine Living Lancaster. The film series is sponsored by Carmen & David's Creamery.

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