[1] Prior to joining, Casel spent four years studying performance and cultural organization in Dakar, Senegal.
While in Africa, she and MarieLouise Guinier co-founded ADEA (Artistes des Echanges Africaines), an organization that seeks to use the arts to facilitate the exchange of ideas and services between Pan African people.
Casel has contributed a number of original musical compositions and contemporary arrangements of traditional African songs to Sweet Honey in the Rocks repertoire.
Her compositions are also included in a children's textbook, World of Music, and The Box, a pilot TV show from Robert De Niro's Tribeca Production Company.
She was also a guest artist in the Smithsonian Institution production of Duke Ellington's Great Ladies of Song.