Past Events
January 31, 2008
Dr. Ademola Olugebefola

Born in St. Thomas, Ademola became enamored with drawing at the age of seven, when his fascination with horses led him to ask his mother to draw one. She did so right away, and an artist was born. His family had moved to the states by this time, first to Brooklyn and then to the Amsterdam Houses (across the street from the current location of Lincoln Center).

As a teen in the ‘50s, he began singing in a doo wop group, and subsequently began playing acoustic bass. “After I heard Paul Chambers on Kind of Blue, I said that’s it. I thought the bass might even become a career.” He even studied big band bass with Atilla Zollar.  "Sometimes while playing certain notes and passages I would see specific colors while grooving with my eyes closed". This experience fascinated him and he would then have the good fortune of meeting trumpeter, composer and bandleader Calvin Strickland, who founded POMUSICART.

While serving as art director of POMUSICART (poetry, music, art) in the mid sixties, Ademola experimented with ways to capture the sensory effect of sound in painting which culminated with the "Blues for Nat Turner Jazz Suite". This avant guard production, performed in series of concerts at the Skyline Ballroom at the former Theresa Hotel in Harlem, was reminiscent of traditional African Ceremonial Theatre within the dynamics of a contemporary sensibility.  He retired from playing music in the late sixties to devote full time to the visual arts. 

On January 31st he also discussed his work as a set designer for the New Lafayette Theater: “One of the most exciting and pivotal experiences of my life, like being in a big band, where you put aside your ego for the greater whole.”  After the mid-way break, Ademola showed the trailer of a work for which he’s serving as executive producer, Drama Mamas, which focuses on the history and plight of black women theater directors.

But Ademola didn’t speak much about his own art, several examples of which were placed in the front of the audience at the Harlem School of the Arts. He shall this Thursday, while revealing even more about the “life, intensity, range, and resonance of color, and how it relates to nature.”