Underground Railroad Artist Biographies

Rodney Appleby

Rodney Appleby is a music teacher, musician, performer, composer, director and producer. He studied music at Buffalo State College and Eastman School of Music.

His involvement with the Underground Railroad residency is a natural extension of a reenactment Appleby and other artists created, based on the book “Freedom Crossing,” by Margaret Goff Clark.

Appleby concurs with Young Audiences’ philosophy that using the arts as a teaching tool encourages students of all backgrounds to discover, explore and ultimately connect with the meaning in the experience.  In his workshop, students will role-play slave, slave-catcher and other characters from history.  They will be guided to create their own texts and perform utilizing the various perspectives.  Appleby learned early in life that spirituals are a powerful way of communicating, and hopes to instill some of that in his Young Audiences students.

He has taught since the 1980s, when musicians began asking him for technical and theoretical assistance.  As well as giving private lessons, Appleby works with schools and arts organizations, such as Ujima Theater, the African American Cultural Center/Paul Robeson Theater, Arts in Education Institute of Western New York, and Buffalo State College.  Appleby’s main instruments are bass and guitar; he also teaches strings, woodwind and vocals.

Appleby is active on the local music scene. He has opened for Jon Secada and Michael McDonald, and recorded and performed with Ian Gillan of Deep Purple, Chuck Berry, and many others.  He has released many recordings, including “Live At Uncle Eddie’s House of Jazz,” “One Eye To Morocco” (with Ian Gillan), and 2009’s “Echoes In Time.” Appleby won the Buffalo Music Award for Best Bass Player in 1992-94, and was inducted into the Buffalo Music Hall Of Fame in 1995.

Annette Daniels-Taylor (Lead Teaching Artist)

Annette Daniels-Taylor is a playwright, poet, actor, teacher, singer and costumer. In 2009, Daniels-Taylor won the Artie’s Emanuel Fried Award for New Play, A Little Bit of Paradise, which premiered at Road Less Traveled Productions in 2008.

In preparing for Young Audiences’ Underground Railroad residency, Daniels-Taylor concluded that children might connect more to a character who was an actual person. Avoiding the obvious, like Harriet Tubman or Sojourner Truth, she sought a woman who had lived on the Erie Canal. Her search revealed Nancy Freeman, upon whom she is basing her character.

She is excited to work with and perform for young people, hoping to inspire them to write and perform themselves, as well as to help them see how relevant their history is to their present life; how different life was 100 years ago; and how important Buffalo was to this movement and its place in history.

Daniels-Taylor has worked at many notable Buffalo venues, including the Albright Knox Art Gallery, and the Buffalo Ensemble Theatre. While living in New York, she wrote and acted, and received a scholarship from the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute. She and her husband, artist Rodney Taylor, moved to his native Buffalo so that they could devote more time to their art and their four children.

Daniels-Taylor is a co-founder of Down in My Soul Productions, a member of ASCAP and The Dramatists Guild, and writer-in-residence at The Langston Hughes Institute. She is also a teaching artist for the Arts in Education Institute of Western New York, Irish Classical Theatre Company, and the African American Cultural Center.

Ntare Ali Gault/Njozi Chorus

Ntare Ali Gault, founder and organizer of the Njozi Poets/Chorus, is a spoken-word artist, poet, actor, playwright, and author. His book, “The Sun Will Rise: A Memoir of an Urban Family” was published in 2008. He works on the stage with Ujima Theatre Company. Gault has won poetry slams throughout North America.

Gault’s workshops for the Underground Railroad residency are based on material researched throughout his lifetime, and particularly from his theartrical productioin, “Ancestral Links: Love and other Revolutionary Mumblings.”  He based his poems and spoken word pieces for the play on stories passed down to him through his grandmothers.

“Ancestral Links” tracks the journey of Africans, ultimately giving voice to those enslaved during this painful time in American history.  The show presents songs by Emma J. Tindley-Horner and her niece, Lauretta M. Anderson.  Tindley-Horner was the wife of a Buffalo preacher, and the daughter of famed hymnal writer Dr. Charles Albert Tindley, the “grandfather of gospel music.”  Tindely wrote By and By, When the Morning Comes, Leave It There, Stand By Me and the original civil rights anthem, We Shall Overcome.  “Ancestral Links” combines these songs with dance, drumming and Gault’s family-based poetry.

Gault has conducted workshops for Young Audiences of WNY, the Alternative Literacy Program, Musicians United for Superior Education and Just Buffalo Literacy Center, specifically inspiring several students to become professional performers.

Robin Monique

Robin Monique, a professional dancer and teacher, was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, and now lives in Buffalo. She holds a BA from the University of Buffalo in Human Services, Early Childhood Development and Dance.

Robin is a Young Audiences’ teaching artist, participating in the Underground Railroad residency.  Her workshops and performance encompass authentic African and African-influenced dances, songs and rhythms that were an intrinsic part of that period’s culture.

Robin began her dance studies at renowned New York City institutions Alvin Ailey American Dance Center and Dance Theatre of Harlem.  She moved on to African, Caribbean and Native American traditions, seeking authentic learning experiences and immersing herself in those cultures: the dances, instruments, songs, rhythms and languages.

Robin has studied and performed with dance pioneer Dr. Pearl Primus, the United Ballet Du Senegal, Ballet Bougarabou du Senegal and the influential Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olantunji. She has also learned from and trained with many teachers from Mali, Senegal, Guinea, Nigeria, Liberia and the Caribbean, including M’bemba Bangoura, Moustapha Bangoura, Marie Basse, Mouminatou Camara, Muhammed Camara, M’baye Diagne, Landing Diatta, Miriam Faye, Ndeye Gueye, Assane Konte, Yousouff Koumbassa, Pearl Reynolds, Djeneba Sacko, Allassane Sarr, Assane Seck, Malik Sow, Abdoulaye Sylla, and Raymond Sylla.

She has taught at many schools and festivals including the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, SUNY Brockport, and the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, in Kingston, Jamaica.

Reynold Scott

Reynold N. Scott is a musician, recording artist, teacher, and composer. He holds an MA in the Art of Music Education from CUNY/Herbert Lehman College, in the Bronx, NY. 

His research and preparation for the Underground Railroad residency includes his lifetime of study.  At the University at Buffalo, Scott has taught the history of spiritual and gospel music.  He hopes to impart to children the vast differences in the music forms through their history, composers and the messages that they convey.  He will delve deeper into the idea that, for example, spirituals have no composers because they organically developed and were used by slaves as a means of communication.

Scott studied Theory of Counterpoint privately with internationally renowned musician and author Harold Knapik.  Scott is an adjunct professor in the Department of African American Studies at State University of New York at Buffalo.  He is a designated Master Teaching Artist for Young Audiences of WNY, and has offered residencies in the Buffalo Public School, teaching “Careers in Music” and “Art of Improvisation.”

Scott was commissioned by the Niagara Movement to compose a work for the 90th Annual Conference.  He is the creator of a multi-media performance using spoken words, music, dance and visuals funded by The New York State Council on the Arts and Just Buffalo Literary Center, among many other projects.

He performs around the world frequently the renowned Sun Ra Arkestra, and has also performed with Rey Scott & Co., Tito Puente, Lionel Hampton, the New Brass Connection, Mack Rucks Ensemble and the Gospel Jubilee.  Scott has traveled as far and wide as Ireland, Japan, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Poland and Portugal, as well as all over the United States.