Endada

ENDADA is MBA's annual student-led music and arts festival featuring live music, an artisan market, improv theater, spoken word, interactive arts experiences, and delicious food from some of Nashville's most-loved food trucks and chefs. Since its inception, ENDADA has focused on celebrating creative freedom, inclusivity, and nurturing the expressive spirit in all of us. The festival is free and open to the community. 

 

Few may know just how ENDADA, MBA's Music and Arts Festival got started. In 2011, a few juniors had the idea to build a festival showcasing the music they were making out of school in their free time. They also wanted a venue where they could invite talented friends from other schools in the area to do the same. After a conversation with Mr. Jim Womack, Art Department Chair at the time, he told a story about a sculpture that used to be on campus in the early 1970's. The boys liked the idea of naming the festival after the sculpture, and that is how the festival got its name. ENDADA was sculpted by Ned Crouch, an artist living in Clarksville, TN and commissioned by MBA's first art teacher, Louise LeQuire. This abstract sculpture was an impressive piece constructed of steel beams painted two parts International Orange and one part Safety Red. The beams were arranged in a lattice-like structure similar in manner to the works of Mark diSuvero, or like the stabile structures of Alexander Calder. At some point in the 1990's the sculpture was damaged and removed. In 2018, student Webb Hunt '19 and Brown Payne '20 created a small scale model of the sculpture based off of old polaroids of the original with the plans to have another large abstract sculpture designed for the school in its place. Later that year, the boys and art teacher Catharine Hollifield visited Ned Crouch in Clarksville to learn more about this influential artist and his work. We appreciate the contributions and influence Ned has had on ENDADA, MBA's Music and Arts Festival. We are thankful for the many students, parents, and sponsors who make it all happen each year. Don't miss this opportunity to celebrate the arts at MBA with us!