Dancing for Peace

Masankho Banda ’91

by Karol Crosbie

It is a Malawi belief that every child is born to fulfill a special purpose. When Masankho Banda was five years old, his grandmother told him that his calling was to plant seeds of peace with dance, music, and stories.

And so he did. It might not have turned out that way. Sometimes ugliness can edge out destiny. His father was a political prisoner for 12 years, and Masankho was a refugee in 1987 when he came to Wooster. “I saw that men are perpetrators of injustice and war against women and children,” remembers Masankho. “I said, ‘I will not be that kind of man.’”

At The College of Wooster, he responded to invitations to talk about African dance and culture at local public schools and began a performance group that raised money for nonprofits. “As a student, I began to understand how performing artists can be involved in the community,” he remembers.

”True peace will come when people across nations sing, and dance, and share each other ’s voices.” -- Mashanko Banda

Since then, he has taught dances of forgiveness and healing to refugees in Croatia and child soldiers in Sierra Leone. He has drummed the beat of inspiration to illiterate adults in South Carolina, incarcerated adolescents in San Francisco, and sick children throughout the world. He has worked alongside Nobel Peace Laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu. In 2001, the Dalai Lama awarded him the title of Unsung Hero of Compassion.

Masankho’s work is delivered through a variety of organizations. He founded UcanDance African Healing Arts, cofounded the Institute of Peace Building, belongs to Wing It! Performance Ensemble, and is a certified InterPlay leader. He is an adjunct professor at John F. Kennedy University and Holy Names University in Oakland, Calif., where he earned an M.A.

His stories and music strip away inhibitions, says Masankho, whether he is telling young children the sharing story of the Wise Elephant or teaching teens how to forgive each other. “Imagine a large gym and a middle school assembly, where kids like to sit on their hands,” he says. “I begin playing the rhythm of an ancient dance and invite students down to do a dance of forgiveness. Soon the football players come, the cheerleaders come, everyone comes, until 400 students are dancing and singing.”

Most times he must simply trust that he has made a difference, but Masankho recalls the times when it has been affirmed. “ I was speaking to kids in green and orange jump suits—juvenile offenders in San Francisco. I did the dance of ancestors and told them stories of people whose shoulders we stand on—Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King.”

Four years after this experience, Masankho was at Stanford University, when a university student approached him. Masankho recalls what she said: “I don’t know if you remember me, but I was 14 years old and at a juvenile center, and what you said made a difference.When I got back to my cell, I thought, ‘ Whose shoulders will my daughter stand on?’’’

Masankho talks of reaching more and still more people. This summer, he took a group to his hometown in Malawi. He plans to go to Palestine and Darfur. He wants to start a mentorship program of artists who want to change the world and would love to work with the United Nations and NATO.

“True peace will come when people across nations sing, and dance, and share each other’s voices.”