India inspired the "Butar," a one-string sitar made from a dresser drawer. No culture is safe from Abu's creative borrowing. "One man's junk is another man's treasure," he is fond of saying.
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Before they left, Abu went back to investigate the lucky trash bin - and discovered it belonged to a toilet-seat manufacturer, who had no use for the leftover holes. Soon the couple had enough money to go home. Knowing there was a religious conference in town just then, Abu decorated and painted "Praise God" on the plaques, then sold them for $2 apiece. He discovered a trash bin behind an industrial plant, filled with large oval-shaped plaques of wood. He tells the story of being stranded in Miami with his wife without enough money to get home to Baltimore. It could be called Magical Pragmatism, about turning hard knocks into drumbeats. Over time, the art he developed was as much life skill as art. He played and sold musical instruments on corners in the early '70s, then started performing in the schools for $35 a show, riding his instrument-laden bicycle as far as Essex. But he left CCB before graduating to pursue his own artwork - painting, then music. After the service, he got his GED and went to the Community College of Baltimore, where he studied sociology and psychology for two years, hoping to be a social worker. He dropped out of Carver Vocational Technical High to go into the Air Force at 17. They left, and he was shuffled among various relatives.
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He grew up poor in West Baltimore's Sandtown, living with his father and stepmother until he was 12. Impressed by the drummers in the marching band, he made his own drum out of an oatmeal box and two pencils. Abu traces his calling back to watching a parade up Baltimore's Madison Avenue when he was 4.
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"She says, 'You took my living room, you took my bedroom!' "
#CARERE MUSIC EMERSON FLUTE FREE#
"The landlord was going to throw them away."Įven with workshops in the basement, on the back porch, on the third floor and on the roof of the Marble Hill rowhouse where he lives with his wife, Saajidah, an administrative assistant at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, instruments have a way of spilling over into his house. Percussion? There's the "Wrenchophone," the "Army Helmet Bongos" and the "Thunder Drums," three 6-foot drums made from the porch columns of a demolished rowhouse.