providence
world
music

About PVD World Music

PVD World Music Institute is a volunteer-run community arts 501 (c) 3 nonprofit organization based in Providence, RI.    

Our work showcases a plethora of contemporary efforts to cherish, celebrate and enrich African traditional music and arts through several annual and seasonal events that we curate with equity and love for community in mind. We are led by an Afrocentric and Indigenous-solidarity ethic. Through our various musical, arts and film programs, we create opportunities for cultural exchange and learning among the richly diverse communities living in Rhode Island. 

We welcome you to join our growing community as we work towards preserving, promoting and enriching the rich cultural traditions embedded in Rhode Island through performance, community advocacy, education and research programs.

PVD World Music was founded by Chance Kinyange Boas, who moved to Rhode Island as a refugee from Tanzania. In 2010, as a student at the Community College of Rhode Island, he conceived the concept of building a research center to promote traditions in art and music as diverse as the people of Rhode Island around him.

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Our Vision​

Our vision is to safeguard and shine a light on the intangible cultural heritage of African and Indigenous peoples living in Rhode Island.

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Our Mission​

Providence World Music Institute aims to promote, celebrate and enrich the musical traditions and arts of African refugees and immigrants in Rhode Island for present and future generations. 

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Our Goals

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Goal One: Education

• Creating opportunities for members of continental Africa and the African diaspora to share cultural knowledges and resources 

• Facilitating public learning about African arts and cultural traditions to facilitate cross-cultural learning and dialogue

• Creating and supporting music exchange programs between African artists within Africa and from the diaspora

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Goal Two:  Support and promotion of African arts and artists

• Provide additional economic support to otherwise underfunded and underrepresented traditional artists and artisans by taking a solidarity economics approach

• Creating a PVD World Music Arts Center in Providence, RI to host Artist Residencies, which will include performances and showings

Goal Three:  Cultural enrichment and survival

• Creating and supporting documentary films aimed at African arts cultural preservation, celebration and enrichment

• Creating opportunities to use music and arts as a mechanism of peace by facilitating collaborative performances between diverse musical and arts communities

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Goal Four:  Research 

• Create a digital Living Archive through which African arts knowledges can be shared freely 

•  Shifting understandings of African musical and cultural traditions from an anticolonial perspective

• Adding new cultural and musical knowledges that are currently lacking or underrepresented within the academy

• Create the Inanga Arts Academy in Burundi, Africa  

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