Word: kuumba
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...nickel for every time someone told me that “Ride On” was their favorite song performed by the Kuumba Singers, I would have a lot of nickels. If you’ve ever been to a Kuumba performance, you know that there is just something about the Negro spiritual—something indescribably moving, inescapably enticing, and unbelievably powerful—that leaves the room breathless. But Negro spirituals have been thrilling singers and audiences alike long before the Kuumba Singers first made them a staple on Harvard’s campus...
...instance, in “Guide My Feet,” another spiritual often sung by Kuumba, the entire song is composed of the soloist singing “Guide my feet,” “Hold my hand,” or various other requests followed by the choral response, “While I run this race.” On the surface this structure may seem repetitive, but when sung, it creates a powerful motif of unity and a joint plea to God flung up to heaven by the slaves...
Furthermore, as the director of the Kuumba Singers, Sheldon K. X. Reid ’96-’97, has often told us, “Black people aren’t the only people who have ever suffered.” The beauty of the spirituals is that every one of us can relate to them in some way because we have all, at some time in our lives, felt down and out. For this reason, even if Kuumba never sang another one, the spirit of the Negro spiritual would continue live on as vibrantly as it does...
Kamala S. Salmon ’03 is a government concentrator in Mather House. She is the librarian of the Kuumba Singers of Harvard College...
...watch all the Kuumba singers—white, black, Asian and everything in between—was very moving for me,” he said...