It didn’t occur to me until the January 26, 2007 segment of Dick Gordon’s radio program “The Story” was broadcast in the U.S. Friday, that Ghana’s 50th Anniversary in 2007 is also the drum master Yacub Addy’s 50th year as a respected traditional stage artist and cultural organizer.
The segment includes two interviews, one with the mother in an African-American family that moved to Ghana seven years ago, and one with Yacub Addy, which was recorded in Washington, DC in May 06 while he was on tour with his percussion and vocal ensemble Odadaa! and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with the one and only Wynton Marsalis.
Together, the two groups performed Addy and Marsalis’ 2+ hour co-composition “Congo Square”, which honors the historic square in New Orleans where African slaves were allowed to perform their own music and dance on Sunday afternoons from the early 1700s to the mid 1800’s.
In the interview Yacub remembers his early concerts in 1955 in Accra and talks about how no one in Ghana at the time was interested in traditional music and dance being on the stage, not even his own family (a number of whom are now known widely in the field). He remembers that it was not until he and his brothers went to the Munich Olympics in 1972 and films of them playing their drums while European audiences cheered were shown in Ghanaian theaters, that traditional cultural performance became popular in Ghana. Addy also talks about his personal experience of performing in Congo Square in New Orleans, where the premiere of he and Marsalis’s piece called “Congo Square” took April 23, 2006.
Although Yacub does not mention it in the interview, after a number of smaller performances for several years, it was in 1957 that he put on Ghana’s first large concert of traditional music and dance at Accra Community Center and Ghanaians first began to see what he was trying to do. From 1957 to 2007, from Ghana to the UK and on to the United States … not an easy path, but a rewarding one.
If you would like to listen to the interviews, go to http://thestory.org/archive/ and press on “listen”. It is the January 26, 2007 segment of the program. Yacub’s interview is the second of the two interviews that play back to back. [editor’s note: this URL no longer works and we have been unable to locate The Story’s archive]
“Congo Square” will tour again in June 07 to summer festivals in the U.S. Summer 07 should also see the release of the studio recording of “Congo Square“. Yacub Addy is also available with Odadaa! for selected performances and master classes.
Author: Amina Addy
