Addy and Marsalis

The United States National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) awarded Skidmore music professor Yacub Addy a National Heritage Fellowship award at the Library of Congress today. When’s the last time you took a class with a national treasure?

Addy currently teaches West African Hand Drumming and leads the College’s West African Drumming Ensemble. The award is America’s highest honor for folk and traditional arts and recognizes Addy’s “lifetime of artistic excellence” and efforts to conserve Ga (ethnic Ghanaian group’s) and Ghanaian culture for future generations.

The award, as given to an African man by the United States government, is particularly important because it rewards Addy for working to preserve Ghana’s traditional culture, as opposed to contemporary Ghanaian or African American culture.

Addy is a world-renowned percussionist who has worked with many musicians, perhaps most notably jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis on the Africa Jazz concerts at Columbia College in 2003, and the composition Congo Square, which premiered in New Orleans in 2006. Addy also heads the Odadaa drum ensemble (currently in resident at The Egg in Albany) and has been a faculty member at Skidmore College since 2005.

For more information take a look at the NEA’s profile and interview.