Abraham Kobena Adzenyah

Abraham K. Adzenyah leading an ensemble at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. Abraham Kobena Adzenyah is a Fante Master Drummer, percussionist, ethnomusicologist, and educator from Agona Swedru, Ghana. After serving as a music, dance, and drama instructor at the University of Ghana (1964–1969), Adzenyah spent over forty years as an Adjunct Professor of West African Music, Culture and Dance at Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut (1969–2016). He has recorded and performed with artists such as Steve Reich, Anthony Braxton, Steve Gadd, Jayne Cortez, and the Ghana Dance Ensemble, with whom he performed at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Mexico. Adzenyah has also co-published two books on Ghanaian percussion methodology and performance.

Early life Abraham Adzenyah was born in 1939 in Agona, Swedru, Ghana. He is the third Master Drummer in his family, following a patrilineal line which began with his great-grandfather. Adzenyah began his professional career studying, performing, and teaching at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana where he receiving formal, institutional instruction in music, dance, and drama. Adzenyah left the university to tour with Ghana's National Dance Ensemble in 1968 and was one of the first drummers given the prestigious title of Master Drummer in the Ensemble.

While on tour with the Ensemble, one of the founders of Wesleyan's World Music Program, Dr. Robert E. Brown, heard Adzenyah playing in New York City's Madison Square Garden. It was after seeing this performance that he recruited Adzenyah to teach at Wesleyan University, a position he would go on to hold for decades. Upon arriving at Wesleyan in 1969, Adzenyah began instructing courses in West African music, dance, and culture—which, over the course of his tenure, he did alongside other Ghanaian artists such as Freeman Kwadzo Donkor and Emanuel Duodu.

His expertise as a Master Drummer (primarily in the Ewe Drumming tradition), with its emphasis on interlocking, polyrhythmic structures, as well as its cultural connection to the histories and peoples of Ghana, allowed him to fit into and advance the blossoming World Music and Ethnomusicology programs which began at Wesleyan University in the early 1960's.

Adzenyah received a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Goddard College in 1976, and an M.A. in Music from Wesleyan University in 1979.

Many of Adzenyah's students have gone on to teach and run Ghanaian drum and dance ensembles at other colleges and universities, including the Berklee College of Music, Brandeis University, The Hartt School of Music, Lehman College, Montclair State University, Mount Holyoke College, Oakland University (Michigan), Princeton University, SUNY Binghamton, SUNY Stonybrook, University of Toronto, Tufts University, University of Alabama, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Yale University, and York University (Toronto).

Publications Adzenyah, Abraham, Donkor, Freeman, Hartigan, Royal. West African Rhythms for Drumset (Alfred Music) , 1995. Adzenyah, Abraham, Cook Tucker, Judith, et al. Let Your Voice Be Heard! Songs from Ghana and Zimbabwe (World Music Press), , 1997.

Performances Nexus Percussion at Expo 86, World Drums concert at Expo '86 in Vancouver, July, 1986. Nexus Percussion, Abraham Adzenyah, Steve Gadd, and Samulnor, Super Percussion at Tokyo Music Joy, 1988.