Addy receives National Endowment for the Arts' top accolade

Skidmore's own Yacub Addy, lecturer in music, is one of nine people to receive the nation's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts: a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship.

Fellowship recipients were announced June 25 by NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman. This year's recipients come from a cross-section of ethnic cultures including Ghanaian, Irish, and Indian, and practice such diverse traditional art forms as Afro-Cuban drum building and Texas-style fiddling, as well as two art forms never before honored through this program: lauhala (palm leaf) weaving and Bharantanatyam Indian dancing.

Landesman said, "On behalf of the NEA, I extend my heartfelt congratulations to this group of stellar artists and thank them for all they have accomplished and shared with us in the course of their careers. Their works of art have delighted and challenged us, illuminated our sense of the world, and refreshed our understanding of what is possible."

A master of traditional music of the Ga ethnic group, a creator of new works rooted in tradition, and a committed educator, Yacub Addy is the eldest living drummer in the renowned Addy family of drummers, singers, and dancers from Avenor, Accra, Ghana.

Addy is a son of Okonfo Akoto, a powerful wontse (won-che) or medicine man, and Akua Hagan, a lead singer in her husband's medicine music. Yacub credits his elder brother Tetteh Koblah Addy (Akwei Wejei) as his primary drumming teacher.

In 1957, the year of Ghana's independence, Addy organized and led the first major staged performance of genuinely traditional Ghanaian music and dance at the Accra Community Center. He later formed two historic groups, Ashiedu Ketrekre, which set a performance standard in Ghana in the 1960s, and Oboade, which became the first professional traditional Ghanaian group to tour in the West (1968-75). Addy's music took him from Ghana to Europe and then to America, where in 1982 he created the acclaimed performance ensemble Odadaa!, composed predominantly of Ga artists, which he leads to this day. The group's performances in the region consistently draw enthusiastic crowds and have been acclaimed for programs that feature energetic, dynamic music and movement.

As a classic Ga ensemble, Odadaa! performs traditional Ghanaian music and dance arranged and choreographed by Addy, as well as new compositions. With Odadaa!, Addy also collaborated with artists of other traditions, creating concerts of new work with kora master Foday Musa Suso of Gambia and jazz artists T.K. Blue and Stefon Harris. Addy's most significant collaboration, with Wynton Marsalis, resulted in two projects, Africa Jazz, produced at Columbia College in 2003, and the ground-breaking co-composition Congo Square, which premiered in New Orleans in 2006 as a gift for the spiritual revival of the Crescent City following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

Through his seminal ensembles, Addy trained numerous Ghanaian artists. In the 1960s in Accra, he identified Five Hand Drumming Techniques, a system to train non-Ghanaian students, copied by many instructors. He has taught widely in the United States, notably in the Washington State Cultural Enrichment Program; the Seattle Public Schools; Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington; Howard University in Washington, D.C.; and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. Since 1995, Addy has been a faculty member of Skidmore's Music Department. Odadaa! is currently in residence at the New York State Theater (the Egg) in Albany.

Addy's pioneering work has preserved and added significantly to the vibrant music and dance heritage of Ghana, and has maintained in the United States a standard of traditionalism rare in his native Ghana today. "The greatest Addy drummers were our deceased senior brothers, Mankattah, Tettey Aku, Tetteh Koblah, and Emmanuel Tettey," says Yacub Addy. "None of them had names in show business. I don't agree with the Western idea of stardom; it brings nothing but division. With God's help, I'm determined to stay true to my culture and speak the truth."

Addy resides in Latham, N.Y. Click here to read more about Yacub Addy.