Creating a 'Kaleidoscope' Black Culture Celebrated

Author: Brittany Gill

Saturday evening's Night of Black Culture was dynamic. It literally breathed life into its title, "Kaleidoscope: 'A Spectrum of Color.'" At 6 p.m. tin foil was removed from a row of fine fresh food for the soul from Taste of Dixie in Burlington. The crowd grew slowly, performers and audience alike serving up the red tomatoes with potato salad next to creamy yellow cheese among other colorful dishes.

A flash of lights announced the beginning of the African American Alliance (AAA) show as Tiffani Harris EX and Damian Washington '03 took the stage as the evening's emcees. In a nearly tuneless, but energetic sweat, the audience was led through the Black National Anthem, which reminds us of the "tears [that] have been watered…[and] the blood of the slaughtered"; it reminds us that America was not built in one day or after one war, but rather in many days and through more wars.

Slam poetry followed the anthem, with the original piece "Size Me" by Crystal Belle '04. Her poetry took a radical stance against oppressive images of beauty, origin and attitude. Everyone comes with his or her own attitude size and type.

Toni Spence '04, next on stage, introduced the audience to the attitude of dance. Using the energy of one arm against the other she pushes her body into full spin. The momentum of Spence's dance pulled the audience into the rhythm of the African running choir, also known as Mchaka Mchaka. The group of singing men that sometimes passes underneath your window at night jogged in place for at least the first of three enchanting tunes.

We were then carried from Africa to Jamaica where Tessa Waddell '02 read Louise Bennett's poetry. The accent and syntax, which were foreign to my Mid-Western ear, produced laughter especially from the Caribbean portion of the audience.

The audience remained captivated as a harmony of "Voices" accompanied by Maurice Opara '04 sang "It's Over Now." The eight women covered a plethora of colors in their bright array of shirts, their "black" faces, and their diversity of voices.

Brandy Perry '04 stretched the diversity of mediums used to display black culture in showing an original movie clip, which battled with the boundaries of beauty.

To top off an already diverse and energetic show was Emmy Gay from New York City with a "One Woman Show." Although the content of her performance was mostly humorous, she refused to be labeled as a comedian. Just as she refused to leave behind her attitude, her radicalism, her feminism or her nappy hair.

Coming from New York City, Gay jumped right into the politics of America's New War. She wonders why we would want to have a war on terrorism when history has shown us that when a war is declared on something, such as the war on drugs or on poverty, we lose. Politics merged into history through intricate moments of poetry, impersonations and personal stories.

Gay described her experience in her fifth grade history class. They spent one day on the holocaust, two days on the civil war and three months (dramatic pause) on the Boston Tea party. Who wrote those history books? Because his story does not always tell my story.

In her story, she defines herself as a pro-Gay, Black Nationalist feminist. These things don't often go together, she admits in a conversation after the show, but they are all an intricate part of her identity. A conglomeration of past experiences form who she is today and she refuses to leave any part behind.

She described herself as being the only black kid in school. Although she claimed her favorite song was "which one of these kids doesn't belong," she wasn't intimidated by her situation and in fifth grade decided to be the first black woman president. With her militant college-aged brother and Tina Turner as role models, Gay questioned what she learned in the classroom. She described her radical reaction to having only one word in the school play- "America." After the only Chinese girl said her short part, "The United States of," Gay, feeling irritated with the blatant racism, couldn't help but put all her bottled-up frustration into her one word. Much to the dismay of her teachers, this energy translated into an unacceptable and rebelliously improvised song.

With continued animation she described a man shouting on a NYC street corner: "Homosexuals are going to hell!" She confronts him, shouting in response, "This is hell! We're all going to hell!" She noticed people that were once walking by with empty faces, were now nodding in agreement.

Gay had the feminists nodding when she looked down at her pregnant womb and insisted that she has not lost her virginity. Rather, she explained, she traded it.

Her carefully constructed and powerfully performed show cannot be summed up. Her show was not like the words on this page: black and white. So often people seem to be cut out like paper dolls and sorted into piles. Gay streched definitions like these through a display of variety, diversity, talent, attitudes and perception.

The audience gave her an appreciative and well deserved standing ovation.