Traditions: Ohio Heritage Fellows; 301; Talise Campbell interview, part 1 of 6

Q:

TALISE: Talise Campbell. T-a-l-i-s-e Campbell, C-a-m-p-b-e-l-l.

Q:

TALISE: Artistic director of Djapo Cultural Arts Institute. ROOM TONE

Q:

TALISE: Oh, Mama Fasi was another mother for me. Uh, when I was a young girl I lived right around the corner from her and one day, uh, I went to one of her classed but not dance, I went to one of her classes to babysit. So, I was sitting there babysitting my cousin's child while she was dancing and Mama Fasi looked at me, she said, what are you doing? I'm babysitting. Put the baby down and get up and dance. From that day, I never stopped dancing, never. I continued on, you know, learning more about arts and culture and drumming and dance and it was because of her.

Q:

TALISE: Mama Fasi which I call Mama was a person that although you weren't her biological child she took you in. So, she was Mama to me. She fed me, she clothed me, she made sure I was in all types of dance classes and that I was exposed to culture and that opened the doors for me, without her I would have never had this opportunity to experience culture which is my culture. You know, and impacted not only just me but entire communities, it keeps going, it doesn’t stop. She passed the torch to me and I kept going with it, I ran with it and I went even further, you know, than all of the teachings that I learned from her, I went even further. I started to take... taking trips to Africa, I started taking young... young girls and young boys to Africa to learn about culture but that didn't start with me, it started with Mama Fasi.