30 Facts About Yacub Addy

Yacub Addy was a Ghanaian traditional drummer, composer, choreographer and educator who collaborated with many musicians in various genres, including Wynton Marsalis.

Yacub Addy has been referred to as "the leading ambassador of Ghanaian music and culture".

Yacub Addy taught at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Yacub Addy was a recipient of a 2010 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.

Yacub Addy was born in 1931 into the Ga ethnic group in the village of Avenor, outside of Accra, Ghana.

Yacub Addy's father was Jacob Kpani Addy, a wonche or medicine man who integrated rhythmic music into healing and other rituals.

Yacub Addy's mother was Akua Hagan, a lead singer in her husband's medicine music.

Yacub Addy's father had 10 wives over the course of his life, and more than 50 children.

Yacub Addy's extended family included many drummers, singers, and dancers, including brothers Obo Addy and Mustapha Tettey Addy.

Yacub Addy's primary drumming teacher was his older brother Tetteh Koblah Addy.

At age 16, Yacub Addy became a Muslim, the first in his family.

In 1956, the year before Ghana gained independence from British colonial rule, Yacub Addy organized and led the first major staged performance of traditional Ghanaian music and dance.

Yacub Addy was the founder of the group Ashiedu Ketrekre, which had two units: an adult group of 40 members with drummers, singers, and dancers and a children's group.

Yacub Addy formed the small group Oboade in 1968, consisting of himself, some of his brothers and a friend.

Oboade was based in London from 1972 to 1975, and it was there that Yacub Addy met his future wife and manager, Amina, an African-American woman.

Yacub Addy had wanted to visit the city ever since he heard Louis Armstrong talk about his hometown and its history during Armstrong's visits to Accra in the 1950s.

Yacub Addy loved jazz and wanted to know more about the area called Congo Square and specifically the rhythms that Africans played there.

On his 1984 trip to New Orleans, Yacub Addy made his first visit to Congo Square, located within present-day Louis Armstrong Park.

In 1993, Yacub Addy moved to the Capital Region of New York.

In 2005, Yacub Addy premiered his work "Kolo" with jazz vibraphonist Stefon Harris.

Yacub Addy first saw Marsalis perform on television in 1981 playing with a symphony orchestra and was impressed with the younger musician's "spirit and his dedication".

Yacub Addy told his wife at the time that someday he would work with Marsalis.

Yacub Addy told Marsalis that he liked him and said "with confidence" that someday they would work together.

At the beginning of their collaboration, Yacub Addy asked Marsalis his years-old question about the music the slaves played in Congo Square.

Yacub Addy first put his system into use in the 1970s when he was teaching in the Pacific Northwest.

Yacub Addy's technique has been copied by many other instructors.

Yacub Addy taught at several institutions, including the Washington State Cultural Enrichment Program, the Seattle Public Schools, Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, Howard University in Washington, DC, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, and at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Yacub Addy died of a heart attack on 18 December 2014, at age 83.

Yacub Addy was following behind an ambulance that was taking his wife to the hospital after she suffered an anaphylactic reaction.

Yacub Addy experienced cardiopulmonary arrest while driving and died in the same emergency room at Albany Medical Center where his wife was being treated.