Winter Eliot 2025: "Stick Pounding" with Melanie DeMore
Stick Pounding
Program Description:
Learn the basics of Gullah Stick Pounding. We will create a foot stomping, hand-clapping rhythmic community and combine it with singing spirituals and songs of protest and peace. Participants will learn about Gullah/Geechee culture through its dynamic music and rhythmic heart. We will create and affirm our common agreed upon language through the making of sticks and sharing our stories and those of our ancestors.We will, as a community, turn the whole place into a living, breathing drum.
Biography:
Melanie DeMore is a 3 time Grammy nominated singer/composer, choral conductor, music director and vocal activist who believes in the power of voices raised together. In her presentations, DeMore beautifully brings her participants together through her music and commentary. DeMore facilitates vocal and stick pounding workshops for professional choirs, community groups as well as directing numerous choral organizations across the U.S, Canada and beyond. She is a featured presenter of SpeakOut!-The Institute for Social and Cultural Change, works with everyone from Baptists to Buddhists and was a founding member of the Grammy nominated ensemble-Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir. She became Music Director for Obeah Opera by Nicole Brooks as part of the Luminato Festival in 2019. She is a charter member of Kate Munger’s Threshold Choirs and conducts song circles with an emphasis on the voice as a vessel for healing. In here own words: “A song can hold you up when there seems to be no ground beneath you”.
This video is a short documentary by Melanie about stick pounding:
Additional Activities
Morning program is just one aspect of Winter Eliot!
Other activities include: choir, singalongs, puzzles, board games, group games, art projects, writing activities, worship, hikes in the woods, and more.
The final evening is New Year's Eve, which includes a worship service where we write what we want to release and/or what we are hoping for in the coming year, place it on a raft that we set aflame, then sail out onto the lagoon. Then we ring in the New Year with a dance and a dessert buffet!
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