KUSH ABADEY – a native of Silver Spring, Maryland, is now based in New York City. He is a highly sought-after drummer for both live performances and studio sessions. The son of master drummer Nasar Abadey and Baiyina Abadey, Kush Abadey credits his parents with introducing him to the formal study of music and supporting his decision to become a professional performing artist. During his May 4, 2017 interview for the Washington DC Jazz Oral History Project, he discussed, among other things, his educational journey—from his preschool days at the Howard University Early Learning Program, to home schooling during his senior year in high school, through undergraduate studies at the Berklee College of Music.

*This following passage is an excerpt from the full interview.

“I have worked as a professional musician for the last 16 years of my life, and I am now [in 2017] 26 years old . . . I started preschool at the Howard University Early Learning Program. . . The first and the biggest influence that I have had up until now is my father, Nasar Abadey. He began [teaching] me on the drums at the age of two. I also began to play hand drums when I was in elementary school, and I took a djembe class. At the age of six, I started to take piano lessons with a guy by the name of Harlan Jones. I studied with him from the age of six until about 13, and he gave me a great deal of information.”

“After that, maybe by the age of 13, I started studying with a world percussionist by the name of Tom Teasley at the Levine School of Music. He taught me a wide range of percussion techniques, and he taught me how to read different percussion instruments—how to read them on paper, how to also write certain rhythms out. He taught me snare drum and other orchestral percussion. I studied with him for maybe five years . . .”

“I also studied jazz composition and improvisation at the Levine School of Music with Jeffrey Chappell, a piano player. Then I got a full scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in 2009 . . . Terri Lyne Carrington was actually the reason I went to Berklee, so I studied with her. And I studied with Ralph Peterson there, Yoron Israel, John Ramsey, and quite a few others in composition and other things.”

“I am currently living in New York . . . I moved here in 2012, [following] a year hiatus after Berklee. I went back to DC for about year, then I came to New York.”

“[Key influences include] my father and trumpeter Wallace Roney, who molded me from the age of 16 to, I would say, around the age of 23, in developing a voice of my own and influencing my playing and approach to the music, how to play the drums, how to write music. I think those two [musicians] had a very strong role in that, and still do . . .”

“My style encompasses all of the styles of that have influenced jazz over the last hundred years. I would say I don’t limit my style of playing to just Straight-Ahead, although Straight-Ahead Jazz does and will always have a huge influence on my playing, whether I am playing R&B, Reggae, Rock . . . The improvisational element and the reaction element of Jazz, will always affect whatever I play.”

“It’s kind of hard to really label how I play, stylistically. When people ask me, I just say I am primarily, at heart, a Jazz drummer, but I try to stay as versatile as possible.”