(beating on drums) - My name is Messan Jordan Benissan I am a West African music and drumming teacher and also I am a chef.

I have a restaurant it's called Me Lon Togo.

And Me Lon Togo means I love Togo.

And Togo is a country in West Africa between Ghana and Benin.

Yeah, my family, my mum and my dad and my siblings, we had such a nice upbringing.

My mom had several different businesses.

She also had a food shack where she prepared breakfast and lunch for workers.

That was my favorite one because I love food.

Every time she is in the kitchen I would go and hang out and watch her cook and help her.

And also, I have the chance to be the first one to taste everything she's making.

And then I start running to make everything she cooks for the family.

After I left Togo and came here, I miss home cooking.

I cook traditional West African cuisine and then I do a little bit of a modern European cuisine and also Louisiana and Cajun and Creole cuisine here also.

It is a place that is very unique because when you come here, you can experience cuisine from different tradition.

And there is a little bit of everything for everybody here.

(band plays acoustic music) Africa is a very diverse place in term of music, our primary musical instrument, also are drums.

So we do a lot of drumming.

So there are drumming performing assemble in almost every community in the country.

Doing this traveling in the country, brought me to Maine and I've been teaching almost over 20 years now teaching the African music and drumming and dancing at Colby College.

( students clapping) (Messan sings in foreign language) I think basically everybody loves drumming, for them to be able to study the traditional drumming from somebody who's coming from the culture who knows very well was almost like some kind of special occasion for them.

- This is my first semester playing African drums.

I first got into it because I played flute and piano, I remember in high school and I really wanted to try something new and Jordan's a really amazing teacher.

And I just love how the class is set up.

You know, there's no sheet music and you just learn the rhythms.

(Jessica plays drums) - I don't, I think that I've ever had exposure to this type of music which is really interesting to think about especially considering how important these rhythms are and sort of the popular music that we listen to on pretty much a daily basis.

And it was very challenging for me because I don't really consider myself to be very musically inclined but Jordan had so much confidence in my abilities.

And I knew that this was something that I wanted to continue doing, learning such a wonderful skill.

- When I teach traditional African music not only I am teaching the music but I am also teaching people about race relations and they thought it was a very poor thing I was doing by using my art form to teach tolerance in classroom.

(Messan plays music with a band) Dave Mellow and Leo Lynch.

We occasionally also performed in other places before I open up Me Lon Togo and now they have become almost like the house band.

(band plays music) So now with my restaurant, that's again same thing I am doing because I know when you bring people to a table and engage in conversation around food, that's how you get to discover people and learn and know something about one another.

I am very blessed doing something that is bringing a little bit of a positive change and in one community at a time.

(band performs acoustic music) (upbeat music) (upbeat piano music)