How music will change the realities of many children in Nigeria

Thank you very much for keep supporting Back to School Africa Initiative, from Nigeria!
As a return to your valuable support, we would like to share with you this month’s Newsletter from the organization that we hope you’d enjoy!

Article written by Anisia, Customer NGO Specialist from Airfunding, based on an interview with Anklin, the founder of Back to School.

 

How music will change the lifes of many unprivileged children in Nigeria?

Next month will be held a fundraising concert in Germany with music influences from Nigeria, South-West Africa and other parts of the world.
Ignite Africa Jam is an initiative created by Anklin, the founder of Back to School, and funded by Nudge-the Global Impact Challenge that aims to reach at least 5000 euros to keep enrolling children Back to School.
The festival will take place on the 8th of September in Berlin, Germany, and will offer the opportunity to assist online and offline for a price of 10 euros for a ticket.
The concert will host 12 different artists and they will perform different styles of music. Specially afro-beats; a style of music that is predominant in Nigeria. Afro-beats is a genre of music very influenced by artists such as Fela Kuti and evolved from styles such as old Caribbean music. It is a fusion of reggae and house.
The concert will also have other different styles of music such as vintage, r&b, pop, and rock music from the 80s so it will definitely be varied and for people with different music preferences.

Music has a lot of importance in Nigeria. There are a lot of ethnicities and different cultures. And each tribe has a different sound. For example, Igbos are known for playing music known as highlife. And every tribe have their own different and unique sounds. Nigerians also love to dance, and is not rare to see groups of people dancing with the rhythm of afro-beats in celebrations such as the Carnival, Christmas, Birthdays, or in a party context. Music-according to Anklin- is a big part of the life of Nigerians, like in any other culture.
Anklin, the founder of Back to school is also a musician. He started playing the drums when he was just 11 or 12 and joined his school band and later on, he will start performing in concerts and just found that playing drums made him really happy.
That is why he developed this idea to raise money for Back to School Africa using music, his other passion. Anklin is planning to do a European tour, visiting cities such as Amsterdam, Viena, and Berlin performing in different cities every month with the objective of having enough funds to keep enrolling children.
It is remarkable how this initiative will spread different cultures and music styles combined with the objective of improving the children of many children, and from Airfunding we would like to wish him luck with this new project and to invite the supporters to purchase tickets to participate in the concert.

IGNITE AGRICA JAM- take a look of the event!

Back 2 School Africa invites all its supporters to kindly join the event on an on-line or off-line basis. In order to purchase the tickets, you can contact Anklin through the Facebook group! See you there!
Curiosity of the month: Learn a bit more about Igbo, a co-official language in Nigeria.
There are over 525 native languages spoken in Nigeria. The official language of Nigeria is English, the language of former colonial British Nigeria.
The major native languages, in terms of population, are Hausa (over 49 million when including second-language, or L2, speakers), Yoruba (over 42 million including L2 speakers) Igbo (over 30 million, including L2 speakers) Fulfulde (15 million), Efik-Ibibio cluster (10 million), Kanuri (8 million), Tiv (15 million), Gbagyi (5 million), Nupe (4 million) and approx. 2 to 3 million each of Kupa, Kakanda, Edo, Igala, and Izon. Nigeria’s linguistic diversity is a microcosm of much of Africa as a whole, and the country contains languages from the three major African language families: Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan and Niger–Congo. Nigeria also has several as-yet unclassified languages, such as Centúúm, which may represent a relic of an even greater diversity prior to the spread of the current language families. It is one of the largest languages of West Africa is spoken by 18 million people in Nigeria. It belongs to the Benue-Congo group of the Niger-Congo language family. The language is thought to have originated around the 9th century AD in the area near the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers and then spread over a wide area of southeastern Nigeria.Igbo is the language spoken by the founder of Back to School, Anklin. It is spoken in the Southern Delta states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo, as well as in the northeast of the Delta state and in the southeast of the Rivers state. In the states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo, Igbo is the main language of trade and commerce. It is used in mass media communication such as radio and television in the southern Delta region.Although Igbo is taught at all levels in eastern Nigerian schools, English remains the principal literary language of the country while remains a spoken and colloquial language. Reading and writing in Igbo is not very widespread. In many urban areas, Igbo is often replaced by Nigerian Pidgin English. Igbo speakers are typically bilingual in English.

Now, let’s learn basic Igbo!
And now that we have learned what is the Igbo language, let’s learn the basics!

You can directly communicate with Anklin in the Supporters Community in Facebook. Don’t forget to join the community if you haven’t done it yet, by clicking on the following link!