Word: swahili
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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...
...senior "plot" is a walkway that contains a plaque from each graduating class. In the 1950s, the students called themselves the Athenians, Socratians, Olympians. In the 1960s there came Les Savants and Les Cherchers (I was one of Les Ameliorants). Then, starting in 1971, there is Upenda Weus, Swahili for "beautiful black ones." And now the Bushandas, the class of '73, their Swahili name meaning "the everlasting ones...
...proprietors still do not know how to reorder goods. And new orders will not be shipped by suppliers without cash in hand, but Uganda's import laws specify cash only on delivery. It remains to be seen whether Amin can step up his lagging policy of mafuta mingi (Swahili for fattening up) by forcing the banks to offer non-secured loans to shopkeepers so they can reorder...
Kuumba is Swahili for creativity. If Sunday's performance is indicative, the group certainly takes its name seriously. Beginning with a rich, solid rendition of the old Negro National Anthem ("Lift Every Voice and Sing") the group escorted the audience on an exciting, innovative two hour trip into black spirituality. The concert format touched on four themes central to the cultural corpus of the Afro-American experience: Spirituality, Love, Struggle, and Joy. Of the four, the least impressive was Struggle, perhaps because the theme lends itself less easily to a celebrative situation...
Henceforth, Mobutu decreed, Katanga province will be called Shaba (after the Swahili word for copper, the source of the province's and the country's wealth), and the Stanley Pool -the Kinshasa harbor area named for Journalist-Explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley-will be referred to as the Malebo Pool (palm tree, in one Zaïre dialect). Elisabethville had already been renamed Lubumbashi and Stanleyville had been changed to Kisangani. Now, even street names like Avenue Charles de Gaulle will have to go, says Mobutu, "despite the admiration we have for this illustrious Frenchman...