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HomeNewsArchivesADAMS MUSIC INSTITUTE SETS 2ND ST. CROIX SUMMIT

ADAMS MUSIC INSTITUTE SETS 2ND ST. CROIX SUMMIT

March 21, 2004 – The Alton Augustus Adams Music Research Institute, a branch of the Center for Black Music Research of Columbia College Chicago, will present its Summit on Researching Music in the Circum-Caribbean: Focus on Quadrille at 8 p.m. Friday, March 26.
This is the third in a series of AMRI Summits that document tradition bearers, music, and cultural practices in the Virgin Islands. The event will feature a keynote address by the Honorable Rex M. Nettleford, Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies and the founder of the famed National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica. Nettleford is an internationally known spokesman for the preservation of the arts and cultures of the circum-Caribbean.
The Summit, which will be emceed by Dr. Olaf Hendricks, will also include a panel discussion on quadrille traditions in the Virgin Islands, featuring Bradley Christian, Dimitri Copemann, and Dr. Dominique Cyrille, who was the AMRI Rockefeller Resident Fellow during Fall 2003. Christian is board chairman of the V.I. Cultural Heritage Institute and president of the V.I. Heritage Dancers; Copemann is a researcher and scholar of V.I. music and dance forms.
The Summit will conclude with a performance-demonstration of V.I. quadrille traditions by the St. Croix Heritage Dancers and Stanley Jacobs and the Ten Sleepless Knights.
The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Cafetorium on the St. Croix campus of the University of the Virgin Islands. The event is supported in part with funding from the V.I. Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Rockefeller Foundation; use of the venue is donated by the UVI Division of Social Sciences.
The Alton Augustus Adams Music Research Institute
AMRI was established in 2001 on St. Thomas in the ancestral home of Alton Augustus Adams Sr. It facilitates the study and documentation of black music in the Caribbean region, particularly in the Virgin Islands. AMRI Summits in 2002 and 2003 featured James "Jamesie" Brewster, Gail Watson Chiang, Eldred Christian, Stanley Jacobs, Helen Joseph, Ethel McIntosh, Sylvester "Blinky" McIntosh, Delita O'Connor, Alwyn "Lad" Richards, Fred Thomas, and Leona Watson.
In addition to the Summits, AMRI also presents workshops that demonstrate preservation and documentation techniques so that V.I. residents can research and study local cultural traditions and the tradition bearers who pass along their unique knowledge and experience. For last June's workshop on St. Croix, see the Source article, (Residents to preserve Crucian words on music.
AMRI publishes a biannual newsletter titled "Cariso" and maintains a small but growing resource center. It is located in Charlotte Amalie at 1-B Kongens Gade, Suite 1, and is open to the public Tuesday through Friday, 9 to 11:30 A.M. and 12:30 to 3:00 p.m. Call 715-5680.

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