Kofi Osei Williams: Creating an African Diaspora Legacy for Young Dancers and Drummers

Fern Gillespie
Brooklyn youth creatively learn the African Diaspora legacy dance and drum through Asase Yaa Cultural Arts Foundation’s School of the Arts. This artistic inspirational instruction encompasses history, arts, and culture for young people from ages 2 to 18. The school’s legacy of nurturing talented Black youth is embraced in its 14th anniversary theme –”Legacy in Motion.”

“Dance and dance schools have always been attached to the teachers. Like when we start talking about some of the great teachers of the dance world like Alvin Ailey. A lot of people would think about his dance company.

But if you think about the amount of great people that came through his company that were taught by him, his legacy is being passed on,” said Kofi Osei Williams, Chief Executive Officer of the Asase Yaa Entertainment Group and a renowned drummer, told Our Time Press.

“We are based in Bed Stuy and I grew up in Bed Stuy. Some of the legacy is right here like the International African Arts Festival, which was earlier the African Street Festival, and was earlier The East. That’s part of our legacy, and all of those things die if we don’t teach the kids that are under us.”

Dance classes cover the African Diaspora. There’s traditional African dance from West Africa to South African styles. Dance classes also include jazz, modern, hip hop, ballet, tap, and salsa. There’s the dance choreography by legends from Katherine Dunham to Alvin Ailey to Misty Copeland.

“African dance is the most popular, because that’s where we started,” said Williams. “But the kids now are really getting into Dunham’s style of dance. They really appreciate it. My mother-in-law Elendar Barnes was a certified Katherine Dunham Dancer. She took classes taught by Dunham.”

Williams balances his career as a performer, educator, and company administrator. He continues to travel to Ghana for drumming classes. His work with African drums has had him performing with artists ranging from jazz greats Pharoah Sanders and Dianne Reeves, gospel’s Vanessa Bell Armstrong, and new age guru Paul Winters to Djembe Drum innovator M’Bemba Bangoura, soul chanteuse Erykah Badu and conscious hip hop star Talib Kweli.

He studied African drums at Dinizulu African Dancers, Drummers & Singers – the oldest African Dance company in America and attended high school at the prestigious Professional Performing ARTS School in Manhattan, which permitted him to perform as a professional drummer. He even played Carnegie Hall as a teen.

He continues to be a musician for the dance theater and the summer camp, where he encourages theatrical professionals from Broadway to Brooklyn to teach at affordable prices so kids can benefit and flourish in the arts.

“I’m a drummer, so as a musician that that’s where I thought my whole life would be. But sometimes you want to do a little bit more. When my wife and I started having children, I wanted to be there for them. I’ve done tours where we did 30 weeks and I’ve been to probably about 40 different countries. In the middle of one tour, I quit.

I said I have to go home and take care of my kids. I was coming home and my kids barely knew me. I knew that I needed to raise my kids,” he said. “So being a musician was one of the greatest things ever. And sometimes I’ll still go on the road, but I can never go on a road for more than a week now.”

Last week, he took a father-daughter HBCU road trip and escorted his teenage daughter to visit the Spelman College campus in Atlanta. “She loves Spelman. She’s like ‘Daddy, sign me up now,” he said. “We come from a family of educators. Like my mother-in-law was an educator. My grandmother was an educator. My mother was an educator. My wife is an educator. So, we take education very strongly in our family. Our school even gives 4 to 5 scholarships every year.”

This year, he wrote the play ‘The HBCU Show’ for their Summer Camp, which teaches the value of historical black colleges and the culture behind them.

At Asase Yaa, Williams oversees the creative and business direction of the affiliated Asase Yaa African-American Dance Theatre, Asase Yaa School of the Arts, Asase Yaa Children’s Arts Camp and the non-profit Asase Yaa Cultural Arts Foundation. As Asase Yaa Cultural Arts Foundation celebrates its 25th anniversary, Williams and Zakiya Harris, Artistic Director of the School of the Arts, have introduced new creative initiatives.

The Toddler Program is for two-year-olds and their caregivers that introduces the joy of movement at an early age. Ready, Set, Move Partnership is an engaging preschool dance curriculum designed to build coordination, confidence, and a lifelong love of dance through music and play. The Legacy Programs is a pre-professional training track designed to prepare advanced students for future careers in the performing arts.

This is the second year of the school’s operation at its modern Bedford Stuyvesant community arts center (506 Macdonough Street), which functions as a hub for learning and connection. It features three dance studios, a music room, a community lounge, office space and fitness classes.

“When children are brave, you get to see a different part of them. Children could only be brave when they feel safe,” said Williams. “We promote that children are always looking to be creative. They are looking to have community, they want to have friends. We want to build a full community of people that could be brave, because they’re in a safe community. We are using the arts to build friendships.”

The 2025–26 School of the Arts season runs from October 2025 through June 2026 at 506 Macdonough Street, Brooklyn, NY 11233. To register children for classes visit https://www.asaseyaaent.org/school/.