Harvard, Kuumba, And Gaining My Voice

Repeated again and again, the word is imbued with tones and rhythm that create space.

One utterance drags out the first syllable, letting the O sound build in the air, and the next is curt and until is splits the last O into a pair of notes.

Drums join in, punching the air in response. Male voices join in, and split into soprano, alto, tenor, bass, all playing against each other in a cascade.

It is a sound of South Africa.

It is a sound born of hardship, the Shosholoza song having originated among men traveling to and from the gold and diamond mines. This is a song of pain that joined the struggle against apartheid and fell from Nelson Mandela’s lips.

Never has struggle sounded so beautiful.

Shosholoza now finds a home tonight among dozens of (mostly) black young men and women dressed all in black save for stoles of kente cloth. Their voices fill the wooden expanse of Sanders Theatre at Harvard University, where I spent time collecting a degree from 1998 to 2002.

These are the Kuumba Singers of Harvard College, who have spent the past 42 years celebrating black creativity and spirituality. A group that was formed to create a safe harbor for black students far from home, who now welcomes people of all colors and faiths to share in its mission.

I was once a member. I get back to concerts when I can. And when I do, I find a home. I lift my fist to the air. I yell and sing along to the classical and contemporary gospel, the old Negro spirituals and blues.

All this, at Harvard, one of the centers of my blerd being.

Kuumba was a doorway to understanding myself as a black nerd. I saw the group as the center of where blackness and Harvard intersected.

To be black at Harvard likely connects you to Kuumba in some way, shape or form.

For me, Kuumba was a way to “be” black.

The overarching dynamic of the black nerd is that we’re people without a country. Because so much of nerd culture is very white, we often are made to feel not black enough both outside and within the race. And the whiteness of nerd stuff – of being the one or two black people at anything you go to – typically doesn’t make you feel wholly part of nerd world either.

And while my sense of racial identity is not about trying to be something, and instead is just about being – I’m black because I am, not because of how I talk, what I do, etc. – Kuumba provided a chance to engage my cultural heritage at its root.

I joined in sophomore year, and heard new songs and songs I forgot I knew. But whether new or old, the songs all felt familiar. They are a part of my traditional Afro-American heritage. And singing was the best metaphor, because I felt these songs within me, within my body, ready to come out.

It was sobering. I never thought I came from a family with a ton of black traditions. We don’t quilt. I’ve never seen anyone jump a broom at a wedding. No storytellers, or dancers, or artists, really. We have “soul food” – which, let’s face it, is mostly Southern country food. We aren’t even all that religious, though we know plenty of religion.

And now there I was, surrounded by all those things.

As much as it fulfilled me, it made me uneasy. Had all my time not among other black people taken away something that made me more black? Can I keep singing these religious songs despite not being religious myself? That I obey no creed? How can I sing “Ride On, King Jesus” when I don’t believe as others believe?

Those questions – a decade old – all came flooding back while at the concert that night. That I wouldn’t be the one holding up my hand in holy fellowship. And, as usual, those questions were swept away in the emotion and spirit and beauty of hearing my people sing.

Of knowing the importance of religion in black culture, not simply for what it is, but for what it delivered: joy, transcendence from deprivation and pain, the everlasting power of hope.

Hope is the lifeblood of black American culture; the hope that we can work for a better tomorrow, to reclaim the humanity stolen from our ancestors, to rise and keep rising – both in spite of all obstacles and because of faith in the future being better than today.

So how could I not cheer when Kuumba, during “We Proclaim Him,” rejoined questions of who could beat back their despair, with powerful, full-voice canonical beauty, “This is Jesus! This is Jesus! This is Jesus! This is Jesus! He’s righteous! And holy! And worthy of honor!”

I screamed. I felt renewed. I felt the power of hope and love.

At Harvard I met the most amazing collection of school-minded black people I had ever seen. All of us, driven, purpose-filled intellectuals, ready to grab life by the reins. Who never let any obstacles stop them.

Kuumba helped this black nerd, awkward in the presence of his own people, switch to the code we all shared and to be at home in his own skin and mind.

If you want an easily seen example of that code-switching, look at king blerd President Obama among black folks and white folks. Obama, who, coincidentally enough, had his sense of blackness forged at Harvard, too.

I sang with Kuumba for only one semester.

There were other interests I wanted to pursue. But Kuumba remained a home. I joined the committee for the Harvard Black Arts Festival, which was an offshoot of Kuumba, and produced shows and programs throughout my years there.

And to this day, so many of my Harvard friends began through Kuumba.

And all the meetings, parties, potlucks, music and singing and fellowship and debates over Star Wars and ’80s R&B late at night at 400 Broadway in Cambridge.

“All right, Fett – Where are the other black people?”

That love, that bond never fades. Time cannot kill it. Distance cannot stop it.

I’ve been gone from Harvard 10 years now. I doubt that I will attend my reunion. But a Kuumba concert, that’s most of my reunion right there. I feel it in the hugs and smiles and laughter, even from people I don’t know.

At the end of the concert, Kuumba director Sheldon Reid invites the alumni to join the active choir on stage to sing one last song.

Kuumba’s former director of 25 years, Robert Winfrey, steps onto the stage as Sheldon moves to the back of the choir with the basses. I join the tenors, a classmate to my left and a current student to my right. Together we sing the benediction, wishing for God to bless you and keep you.

Amen to that, and to the Electric Slide we did afterward, a sea of black people dipping and spinning among the sober white marble statues of dead Harvardian scholars.

You, know, the Electric Slide

My first year with the Black Arts Festival, our theme was sankofa.

Translated from the Akan people of Ghana as “go back and get it,” sankofa is conceptualized as a bird that looks back while traveling forward, an egg in its beak. Use your past to propel you into the future. Use your heritage as a strength for a better tomorrow.

Harvard strengthened my nerdiness. Kuumba enriched my blackness. It’s one of the few times I ever feel part of a community.

So now I try to do as Sheldon said at the concert: “Take what you got here with you. Take it with you.”