Drum roll, please. Trinidad & Tobago Sweet Tassa is coming to Gainesville.
The group will perform, host classes and speak about tassa, a drum of North Indian origin.
Tassa is a large part of weddings, religious practices and other cultural celebrations in Indo-Caribbean culture in Trinidad and Tobago.
The UF Center for World Arts and the School of Music will also be hosting Lenny Kumar, one of the most recognized tassa drummers in Trinidad and Tobago and founder of the Trinidad & Tobago Sweet Tassa Academy.
The weekend of music and culture from the Indian-Caribbean diaspora will be full of events free to the public:
On Friday there will be a guest lecture in Room 144 of the Music Building at UF at 10:40 a.m.. The main performance will be Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Sante Fe Springs Arts Festival in downtown Gainesville.
Studio Percussion, a non-profit organization that offers percussion lessons, will also be holding a class at 4:30 Saturday.
At 8 p.m., there will be a lecture and recital by UF ethnomusicology student Chris Ballenge, featuring T&T Sweet Tassa in the Steinbrenner Band Hall courtyard. For more information, e-mail Chris Ballengee at chrisbal@ufl.edu. Space is limited for each event.
