Diamano Coura West African Dance Company is a non-profit cultural organization dedicated to the preservation, education, and appreciation of traditional West African music, dance, theater, and culture. Since its inception in 1975 Diamano Coura, under Director Dr. Zak Diouf and Artistic Director Naomi Gedo, has implemented its mission through on-going workshops, performances, youth programs, touring engagements, lecture demonstrations, community outreach, and creative partnership programs with renowned artists and performing companies.

In addition, Diamano Coura strives to portray West African music and dance specifically as forms not simply for entertainment or exhibition, but rather, means by which communities educate, communicate, organize, and preserve their ancestral past. Diamano Coura in the Senegalese Wolof language means "those who bring the message." In People Like Me, Diamano Coura will present several masked dances from Liberia's indigenous groups.

While the directors, Naomi and Zak, are respectively from Liberia and Senegal, Diamano Coura embodies an entourage of carefully trained male and female senior company dancers, actors, singers, acrobats, musicians, stiltwalkers, and visual artists from Mali, Senegal, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Gambia and the United States. Diamano Coura also embodies a junior company of 15 members and performs to over 500 youths between the ages of five and seventeen within the San Francisco Bay Area. The Junior and Senior Company have made an impact on youths in the Los Angeles School District Young Audience Project, San Diego School District Artist-In-Residence Project, as well as young people in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Currently Diamano Coura offers a variety of on-going cultural classes and workshops within the San Francisco Bay Area, private consulting and community services. The company offers a free weekly class in drumming techniques for women, along with a work-study program that allots numerous teens, low income adults and college students to participate in classes, workshops, and attend performances offered by the company free of charge. Regular classes in music and dance are also offered to the community weekly at the Alice Arts Center and Laney College in Oakland for children and adults of all dance levels and experiences. Diamano Coura is online at: http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Wing/3059/diamano/.

Amongst Diamano Coura's honorable events the former Mayor of Oakland, Mr. Elihu Harris, presented the Company with a Proclamation declaring February 17, 1996 Diamano Coura's Day in Oakland, California. The proclamation was presented to Diamano Coura's director and artistic director during the company's 20^th anniversary concert, Se-Ki-La-Ti (meaning longevity) for all the hard work and outstanding benefits Diamano Coura has made throughout the Bay Area community. In 1997 Diamano Coura was presented with proclamation from the Mayor of Houston, Texas declaring September 22, 1997 Diamano Coura's Day in Houston, Texas. During its inception the company has also received prestigious awards from the Government of the Netherlands, Chevron Co., Los Angeles, San Diego, and Oakland school districts. Amongst its funders are the California Arts Council (CAC), National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Oakland Arts Council, Zellerbach Family Fund, the Barkley Philanthropic Society, and the Clorox Foundation.

First appeared in People Like Me 2000