Ho, March 10, GNA - A Ho-based NGO, Institute for Music and Development, is collaborating with the Centre for Black Music Research to form and develop an African chapter in Ghana. The Centre is a consortium of music research groups in the United States of America.

Professor Komla Amoaku, Executive Director of the NGO in a release said the chapter would serve as the African component of the international research consortium.

The consortium is geared towards compatible, collaborative research and joint dissemination of results of projects internationally through publications, bi-annual conferences and performances. The release said, the projects could be strictly field or historical, ethnological, studies in aesthetics and pedagogical or analytical studies of various kinds.

It said the NGO had already received a US State Department and Ambassador's Grant, to conduct field research in the Volta region. The research involves collecting, digitising, cataloguing and classifying traditional music of Ewes as well as developing a website to disseminate the archival material internationally. The release said establishing the chapter in Ghana for Africa would make the country an important research focal point where research findings on African art forms and related discipline would be centred for transmission worldwide.

It was optimistic that the chapter would affiliate with educational institutions in Africa to make Ghana a major research centre for international scholars, students, artists and other art professionals in music and related fields.

The NGO was established to bring together stakeholders and activities necessary for the development of a vibrant music industry in Ghana.

This would include traditional contemporary music in their varied forms and their accessibility to the widest audiences possible. The Centre for Black Music Research, based in Chicago, Illinois, is made up of the Alan Lomax Archive, New York, Societa Italiana di Musicologia Afroamericana (SIDMA) Cheiti, Italy and Small Island Cultures Research Initiative (SICR) Sydney, Australia.

The rest are the International Commission on Urgent Anthropological Research Centre (ICUAR) Vienna, Austria, the British Association for American Studies (BAAS), the European Association for American Studies (EAAS), the Alton Augusstus Adams Research Institute (AMRI), St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. 10 March 06