VOA标准英语2010年-Baaba Maal Music Festival Highlights E

Senegalese musician Baaba Maal is using an annual music festival to focus on education in the country's remote northern regions.

At Baaba Maal's fourth annual "Festival les Blues¹ du Fleuve," musicians from around West Africa gathered along the Senegal River to play traditional rhythms and modern beats before thousands of spectators. But they were also there to draw attention to issues of education - a topic of increasing relevance² to people in northern Senegal.

As one of Africa's most acclaimed³ musicians and a youth ambassador for the United Nations Development Program, Maal is using the music festival, in his hometown of Podor, to talk about the future of the region's children.

"I think education is one of the most important gifts that we can send to the next generation, in order to pass to the next generation, because I believe that without education the next generation in Africa will not be able to understand what's going on in the whole world and how to go into it and how to exchange ideas, how to use the modern way of communicating to be part of the world. I think education is really, really a key to develop the mind and to develop the spirit and to be free for a lot of things," he said.

Podor is located in Senegal's northern Fouta-Toro region and is home to the Pulaar, Toucouleur and Fulani ethnic⁴ groups. Primary school enrollment⁵ in this community of about 12,000 people is traditionally lower than the rest of Senegal.

Harouna Sy helps coordinate⁶ programs in the region for the community-led development group Tostan. He says education has historically been a low priority, especially among girls.

Sy says Pulaar culture has close ties with Islam, so a French-based education for girls was not a priority as it was in areas where there was more direct contact with European colonizers. He says Tostan programs are helping⁷ parents become more aware that educating their daughters is not a handicap - that a woman who is well educated, even if she spends less time working at home, will contribute enormously to Senegal's development.

The local government in the Fouta region is working toward United Nations Millennium⁸ Development Goals to ensure universal education for all primary school aged⁹ children. Seydina Kane heads the region's Department of Statistics and Planning for Education.

Over the last thirty years, Kane says female registration¹⁰ in schools across the region has grown from just over two-thousand girls to nearly 26,000. While more than 60 percent of the region's children are now in school, Kane says there is clearly much work to be done.

When Baaba Maal first started his festival five years ago he wanted to use music as a platform to discuss socially relevant issues, including education. By using music to encourage girls to get an education, he says everyone will benefit.

"Music is a beautiful thing to do. But at the same time it's a very serious thing in Africa," he said. "Everything that people don't know about their history, about their relationship between communities, families and how to live together has been told through music. And music, at the end of the day, is the reference to know the responsibility of every human being here. When you go all over the world people don't seem to know that women are coming at the front line and that's a good thing, because they have the ability to be together and to focus on all the projects that they have until they have a good result. Especially here in Africa, when women want to be together they all succeed."

Maal says in a society where traditions are very strong, it's not easy for women to leave their families. But he says he is working to change tradition and to make it into something that benefits a generation of educated young women.

1 blues   

n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐

参考例句：

• She was in the back of a smoky bar singing the blues.她在烟雾弥漫的酒吧深处唱着布鲁斯歌曲。
• He was in the blues on account of his failure in business.他因事业失败而意志消沉。

2 relevance   

n.中肯，适当，关联，相关性

参考例句：

• Politicians' private lives have no relevance to their public roles.政治家的私生活与他们的公众角色不相关。
• Her ideas have lost all relevance to the modern world.她的想法与现代社会完全脱节。

3 acclaimed   

adj.受人欢迎的

参考例句：

• They acclaimed him as the best writer of the year. 他们称赞他为当年的最佳作者。
• Confuscius is acclaimed as a great thinker. 孔子被赞誉为伟大的思想家。

4 ethnic   

adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的

参考例句：

• This music would sound more ethnic if you played it in steel drums.如果你用钢鼓演奏，这首乐曲将更具民族特色。
• The plan is likely only to aggravate ethnic frictions.这一方案很有可能只会加剧种族冲突。

5 enrollment   

n.注册或登记的人数；登记

参考例句：

• You will be given a reading list at enrollment.注册时你会收到一份阅读书目。
• I just got the enrollment notice from Fudan University.我刚刚接到复旦大学的入学通知书。

6 coordinate   

adj.同等的，协调的；n.同等者；vt.协作，协调

参考例句：

• You must coordinate what you said with what you did.你必须使你的言行一致。
• Maybe we can coordinate the relation of them.或许我们可以调和他们之间的关系。

7 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

8 millennium   

n.一千年，千禧年；太平盛世

参考例句：

• The whole world was counting down to the new millennium.全世界都在倒计时迎接新千年的到来。
• We waited as the clock ticked away the last few seconds of the old millennium.我们静候着时钟滴答走过千年的最后几秒钟。

9 aged   

adj.年老的，陈年的

参考例句：

• He had put on weight and aged a little.他胖了，也老点了。
• He is aged,but his memory is still good.他已年老，然而记忆力还好。

10 registration   

n.登记，注册，挂号

参考例句：

• Marriage without registration is not recognized by law.法律不承认未登记的婚姻。
• What's your registration number?你挂的是几号？