Musical Politics and Political Music

MORE A MUSICALLY inclined black political organization than a choir, Harvard's Kuumba singers will be four years old in November. The word "kuumba," Swahili for "creativity," typifies the group's spirit. Their repertoire is not confined to any single style of black music or even solely to music. Their musical performance ranges from spirituals, gospels and African folk songs to modern rhythm and blues. Essay and poetry readings from "I am somebody" theme of Jesse Jackson to the caustic verse of black poets like Don Lee also find their way into many Kuumba concerts.

"We appeal to a common black culture with a political orientation," says Ken Ingraham '74-5, president and one of the remaining original Kuumbas. "We stay away from specific incidents but we're not apolitical. In fact, people often say we're too political.

"We are universal in that regardless of people's politics we can all relate because we present the essence of blackness in this country to a gamut of black organizations from churches to political activists. We also try to make positive impressions on young black brothers and sisters as role-models," Graham says.

The Kuumba ranks are as diversified as its musical scope. Since its inception the group has included students from Harvard-Radcliffe, MIT, Northeastern, Simmons, Boston College, Boston University and Boston area residents, as one way for black students to meet on a regular basis.

"The Kuumbas brings a lot of different people from very different backgrounds together," says Kathy Gatson, '76 student director, pianist, and songwriter. "This is the first time singing certain kinds of black music for some of us but we all come together and become one."

Linda Buck '76, another student director, echoes Gatson's sentiments, "It's not so much a choir as a feeling or atmosphere created from working and fighting together. It becomes a part of you, a part of you that you really love."

The Kuumbas began as an outgrowth of an Afro-American Studies course, "The History of Black Music," taught by Hubert Walters, a lecturer and the group's first director. A combination of black students' interest in organized singing and Walters's interest in a vocal group as a workshop and laboratory for his class provided the impetus for the group's formation.

"I felt the need of a group, I missed mine," says Walters, who directed the Choral Society at Shaw University before coming to Harvard. "I wanted to continue to conduct a choir. I found many interested and talented black students, most of them situated at Harvard."

Seventy to eighty students showed up for the first organizational meetings. The size then dwindled down to about 50 or 60 people, about what it is now.

Dennis Wiley and Fred Lucas, two seniors who graduated in 1972, took Walter's class and were instrumental in forming the Kuumbas. Lucas, now an assistant minister at St. Paul's AME Church in Central Square, gives most of the credit to Wiley.

"The impetus for organizing came from Dennis." Wiley agreed to direct the group "for no salary--out of the goodness of his heart," emphasizes Lucas.

"We felt a general need for an instrument for the expression of black musical creativity," Lucas says. At first oriented toward sacred music, the group later developed a wider range, and it added poetry and prose readings. "We wanted to try and fill the vacuum for black creative arts. We saw it as a chance for spiritual communion, a forum for political views and for our belief in God," says Lucas.

"It was also an opportunity and desire to perpetuate the great tradition of choral singing, the type of black music existing for years at Southern colleges," added Walters.

The group became a part of the Harvard-Radcliffe Afro-American Cultural Center a year later, as part of an attempt "to act as a catalyst to bring together all the creative efforts of black students in the Boston area," explains Walters. The Cultural Center has since been besieged by its problems and is now struggling to remain solvent. But the Kuumbas keep achieving.

During spring vacation break this year the Kuumbas went South and entertained in Atlanta, Georgia; Lynchburg, Virginia; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Washington, D.C. and Chapel Hill, N.C., the locations of schools whose choirs usually make sojourns North to display their talent at schools like Harvard. The choir has also toured the Midwest the past two years, drawing raves from college and church audiences.

"But we're just an iceberg on stage--just the tip--a lot of personal and group agony is all behind the scenes and it's going to take much more of that kind of unseen work because we are striving to make Kuumbas an institution," declares Ingraham.

But besides the usual financial problems besetting such venturesome attempts, the Kuumbas have trouble being accepted in their own community.

"Black people on campus don't understand the significance of the Kuumbas," Graham says. "It's paradoxical that we are more accepted away from home than at Harvard. We get apathy from the black students and a lack of supporters, even though we are the only consistent black cultural group here at Harvard.

"We got overwhelming responses from audiences wherever we performed. Everyone wants us back next year. We have been offered assistance to tour Africa. Europe and East Asia. People who hear us are so moved they are willing to make generous offers.

"But then it's so frustrating when you come home and can't get financial assistance to even buy an organ."

Frustrations not withstanding, the Kuumbas are thrilling to watch as well as hear when they are onstage. In last week's performance at Burden Hall at the Business school the singers captivated a crowd of over 300 people. Clad in a flowing white choral robe and white slacks, and topped by his shiny black Afro, Ingraham and the dashiki and and Afro-garbed choir exuded a contagious joy and enthusiasm in their singing. The audience forgot its own troubles for three hours and stood up and clapped and chanted and shouted amen and hallelujah with the Kuumbas. Despite the hard work, lack of support and other problems, Walters's evaluation of the group's growth seemed quite appropriate: "They still make beautiful music and that's what it's all about."