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Osubi Craig
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Osubi Craig has served as the director of Dromatala, a community traditional based
West African Percussion and Dance Ensemble, since the group was organized in
1993. As a by-product of the nearly forty year-old Pan-African cultural movement
and a 3rd generation percussionist, he has been involved in many organizations
committed to the preservation and perpetuation of African and African-American
culture. He has served as musical director for the Children of the Diaspora (New
York, NY) and the African Caribbean
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Dance Theatre (Tallahassee, FL); founder of
the Lions of Judah Drumming Battery (Gainesville, FL); and as both musical and
artistic director of Florida A&M University’s renowned Orchesis Contemporary
Dance Theatre (Tallahassee, FL). He was the first student to serve as a director of
this company. He also performed with the symphonic, jazz and marching bands
while he attended and graduated from Florida A&M University with a bachelor’s
degree in Industrial Engineering and a minor in Jazz Studies.
Osubi has studied with master drummers Abi Odun McCray, Chief Bey, Nana
Dinizulu, Malik Sau, Mor Thiam, and Mbemba Bangoura, and has performed at such
venues as the African Street Festival (New York, NY), Dance Africa (New York,
NY), the Montreux Jazz Festival (Montreux, Switzerland) and the North Sea Jazz
Festival (Den Haag, Holland). He has performed with Jerry Gonzales and the Fort
Apache Band, and has been a contracted musician for Urban Bush Women, Alvin
Ailey American Dance Theatre, as well as lead djimbe drummer for Kulu Mele
African American Drum and Dance Ensemble (Philadelphia, PA). In the summer
2001, Craig successfully wrote for funding from Arts International, and organized and
led a trip for his 24 drummers, dancers, and singers representing Dromatala to
Santiago de Cuba to represent America at the 21st Annual Festival De Caribe and
Festivals of Fire. Dromatala was the first African American Company to ever
perform at these Festivals. Craig is interested in the continuous innovation of the
African centered cultural movement and moreover, traditional West African music
and dance in America and around the world.
Craig currently serves simultaneously as Artistic and Musical Director of
Dromatala (Philadelphia, PA and Tallahassee, FL) and Associate Director of
Prophecy Dance Works (New York, NY). Craig is also a staff musician for Alvin
Ailey American Dance School (New York, NY) Arts in Education program, an artist
in the Philly Pops (Philadelphia, PA), Lincoln Center Institute (New York), and
NJPAC (New Jersey Performing Art Center) (Newark, NJ) Arts in Education
Programs. Craig is a roster artist on the New Jersey Councils on the Arts Artist
directories as well as on the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts, which recognized
Craig by funding his travels to study hand and stick percussion at Carnaval 2002 in
Salvador Bahia, Brazil. Most recently, Craig was again added to the prestigious
Pennsylvania Artist on tour Roster for 2005 just after traveling back to Salvador
Bahia, Brazil to study hand percussion with world-renowned percussionists Ile Aiye.
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