About the AAAI

The AAAI has provided opportunities for thousands of Indiana University students to explore their talents in performance, teaching, and arts management, and to gain knowledge of the history and culture of African American music and dance while pursuing degrees in a broad range of fields. A number of AAAI alumni have used their training as a foundation for professional careers in the arts as performers, producers, technicians, writers, and managers. The African American Choral Ensemble, African American Dance Company, and IU Soul Revue are open by audition to IU students, and are offered for credit through IU’s Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies. Our ensembles are available for concerts, festivals, ceremonies, workshops, and lecture-demonstrations from October through April. For more information, contact Joii Cooper, Performance Manager, at (812) 855-3676.

History

Herman C. Hudson, who was a professor of Linguistics at Indiana University, founded the African American Arts Institute in 1974. Recognizing that the reservoir of student talent and interest in Black performance styles could foster the development of ensembles as a vital part of academic coursework, Hudson established the IU Soul Revue in 1971 and appointed Ethnomusicologist Portia K. Maultsby as the ensemble’s director. In 1972, the IU Soul Revue was first offered as a credit-bearing ensemble under the title, "Soul Music: Culture and Performance.” The Revue's success provided the foundation for the establishment of the African American Dance Company in 1974 under the direction of Iris Rosa. In addition to developing performing arts ensembles, Hudson initiated several research projects among African American scholars on the Bloomington campus. The combination of research activity and the performance, outreach, and creative activity undertaken by the two ensembles led to the Institute's establishment that same year, under Hudson's directorship. In 1975, the African American Choral Ensemble was founded, thus completing AAAI’s academic/performance component, as it exists today. Each year our ensemble performance calendar is filled with concerts, workshops, and lecture/demonstrations on the IU campus, in the city of Bloomington, throughout Indiana, and other parts of the U.S. The Institute remains one of the few performing arts programs at a college or university with an emphasis on African American performance traditions that features credit-bearing ensembles.