Angklung. Djembe. Berimbau. Such foreign terms may be unfamiliar to most, but for a number of local fourth- and fifth-graders, these terms are immediately recognized and with good reason: they play them. Children from Champaign-Urbana elementary schools demonstrated their newfound skills on world instruments such as these at the World Music and Dance in the Schools fall concert on Saturday.

At the concert, put on by the Robert E. Brown Center for World Music at the University, students and instructors alike had the chance to show off the effects of the program that enabled the fourth and fifth-graders to study at the hands of world-renowned artists in Balinese Gamelan, West African Drumming and Brazilian Capoeira.

“You can actually understand what you’re saying just by talking ‘drumming,’” said Haley Cardwell, a fifth-grader at Flossie Wiley Elementary, where Moussa Bolokada Conde taught West African drumming. “When Bolokada is playing drums, he’s saying ‘Hi’ to you, and ‘How are you doing?’”

Educators at the elementary schools have also noted the postive force the program serves for the school and its students.

“We’re really grateful to have such a great program. It doesn’t happen very often,” said Abby Crull, a music teacher at Booker T. Washington Elementary School. “I’ve seen kids that aren’t always into things like doing music class, but have really found a niche with this.”

Such a niche was found by Jerrion Hunter, who demonstrated Capoeira’s roots in dance and martial arts, performing acrobatic flips to the ensemble’s beats. Hunter was invited by director Denis Chiaramonte to continue studying the art form at the local Capoeira Academy.

The program took off when a pair of music educators at Champaign elementary schools asked for help from the Center for World Music. The request was understood as a short performance for the students, but the Center for World Music saw the potential for something with far more impact.

“We didn’t want to do simple demonstrations, and then go away,” said Philip Yampolsky, director at the Center for World Music. “It’s good promotion, but it doesn’t add up to anything.”

With the Gamelan artist Ketut Gede Asnawa already instructing students at Franklin Middle School, Asnawa was also sent to Bottenfield Elementary in Champaign to begin a bi-weekly program teaching Indonesian music. Yet these classes, freely offered to the public schools, were funded directly by the center. As more of the center’s artists began teaching at elementary schools in Fall 2009, the Center for World Music applied for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, or NEA.

Now armed with a $40,000 grant from the NEA, the program is planning on expanding its world music education even further, which Yamplosky said will include, in addition to the three styles already being taught: Indian dance, drumming and voice training, and another form of West African drumming.