New York/ Canadian composer Sylvain Leroux achieved what many told him was impossible: he raised $25,000 to conduct a four-month experimental music education project in Guinea. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, Sylvain arrived in Conakry, Guinea this February and used his invention, the chromatic tambin (an updated version of the flute of their own culture’s traditional tambin–or Fula flute) to teach a group of children to read and write music. During his stay in Guinea, Sylvain wrote vivid blog posts describing their adventures, teaching, the emergence of Ebola, and the challenges his students faced while composing, arranging, rehearsing, and recording a full CD of fantastic music on Mulatta Records (which previously released CDs of music created by children from Brooklyn, Spanish Harlem, and the high Andes in Guatemala). The children at Conkary’s Centre Tyabala study drumming, singing, dancing, acting, and performing. They took to the flute with passion and worked day-after-day until they owned it. Their spirit, intensity, and atmosphere are vibrantly captured on “Les Enfants de Tyabala.” "We are in Conakry in an industrial hangar near a soccer field, people are passing by, construction is going on across the way, sometimes other art companies share the space which is run by the local “Maison des Jeunes” (Youth House). The hangar serves as classroom, rehearsal space, office, print shop, studio, kitchen, dormitory, storage, used car parking lot and concert hall. I am here with 12 kids ages 4 to 16 who are students at the Centre Tyabala Théâtre de Guinée where they receive a primary education and training in the arts of music theatre. Thanks to the wisdom of their director, Mr. Mohamed “Momo” Sylla, I am allowed to work intensively with them and for the last 3-1/2 months we have been studying flute playing and music theory and we are now recording the music that we have learned. We invite you to put on your headphones, close your eyes and join us in Taouyah with Bonfils, Abdoulaye, Fatoumata, Aboubacar, Seydouba, Soumah, Koumbassa, Naby, Sidiki, Conté, Allassane and Mahawa."