Artists & Communities Host Site: Oneida Nation Arts Program
P.O. Box 365
Oneida, WI 54155
Web site: http://www.oneidanationarts.org

Millennium Artist:
Andrew Drury
Composer
New York
E-mail: Andrewdrury@earthlink.net

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Bebop jazz, hip hop, and funk met a culture where drumming has always been a natural form of expression during Andrew Drury's Artists & Communities residency with the Oneida Nation Arts Program in Wisconsin.

Over the course of six months, Drury explored improvisational drumming with 300 residents of this Native American community, building on indigenous traditions of the drum as a communication and celebratory instrument. Recycled materials - bottles, cans, buckets, pots - replaced classic drum kits and ensured that the joy of the beat was available through workshops in local elementary schools, high schools, and recreational centers.

Andrew Drury has honed his skills as a percussionist throughout his career as a jazz and improvisational drummer in New York. His unique "junk" percussion program evolved over ten years' involvement in community art projects with children's museums and summer camps, in prison settings, and with indigenous communities in Guatemala and Nicaragua. Over the years, Drury has also incorporated poetry, visual arts, and street theater into his percussion workshops.

Drury's workshops with the Oneida community taught traditional as well as less orthodox drumming techniques, rhythmic skills, and the importance of working cooperatively to create a finished piece. His improvisational approach allowed for broad creative input and, for many of the younger participants, an expressive outlet for the energy and stresses of adolescence ordinarily not easily accommodated in the school curriculum.

Through their Artists & Communities residency, Drury and the Oneida Nation Arts Program produced a CD presenting original works created collaboratively with other tribal artists. Drummer and poet Richie Plass is featured on the spoken-word piece, "Eyes That Can Hear;" singer Jennifer Stevens created a vocal piece, "Spirit Song," integrating her classical music training and Native American culture; and drummer Ted Skenandore realized a long-held dream, in "Harley Heartbeat," of creating a composition incorporating the rhythmic throb of his Harley motorcycle.

For all of the participants, Artists & Communities opened up new outlets for self-expression. More importantly, Drury's work provided a focus for the Oneida community to affirm the value of their traditional culture while discovering new ways of expressing that culture through their art.

Beth Bashara, Program Director at Oneida Nation Arts Program, confirmed the success of Drury's Artists & Communities residency, "the positive effects of this project were the gained musical rhythm of the tribal students, the creative freedom of the individual artists, and the continued integration of the arts in various aspects of the Oneida community....the idea of pairing community artists and local communities was a great start in addressing the value of arts in the community….yet it is only the beginning of a lifelong commitment to community or individual artistic development."

MILLENNIUM ARTIST BIO

Andrew Drury is a composer and percussionist who had led junk percussion residencies in a wide-variety of schools, prisons, festivals, community theaters, Central American villages, housing projects, museums, and with the physically challenged. He was an AIE artist-in-residence with the Washington State Arts Commission prior to moving to New York. Drury has received numerous grants for his work and has recorded three CDs of his compositions with prominent jazz musicians.