July 1, 1972: Ann Faith Harris and the Imani Music Workshop

 

        The problems that Ann Harris and the members of her mass chorus are addressing here, unfortunately, are still with us.   

July 1, 1972 

Going Beyond Anger to Black Awareness 

Joy, Power Harmonize Within Imani Music 

        Before you get down to other awarenesses in the Humboldt YMCA’s tiny upstairs gym, you have to get past the awareness of the gym itself.

        The Imani Music Workshop knows how to do it.

        One dose of the rollicking churchiness of “Swing Down Chariot,” the opening song, and you forget about the yellow-painted bareness of the place because by now the music has got you feeling good.

        Maybe that’s why Ann Harris waits before she talks. Nothing before “Swing Down Chariot” (Ann wrote the song), but when it’s finished she leans into the microphone on the piano and tells the crowd of about 125 at last weekend’s Black Arts Festival just what’s happening.

    Ann’s director of the Imani Music Workshop, but she’s so off-handed and sincere – not like a regular emcee at all – that you know she MEANS it and means it so deeply that what she says should have been self-evident all along.

    The program is called “A Taste of the Good Life” and Ann explains: “The good life is the black life. And we feel that way ‘cause we feel good about bein’ alive. And stuff like that.”

     Then up comes another Ann Harris song – “Thank You For My Life” – and you don’t need any more explanation.

    The whole program speaks for itself in pride, determination, self-realization and, yes, love. And the Imani Music Workshop wants to make sure that everybody in that crowd shares it, tastes it and lives it.

    “What we’re trying to get over,” Ann Harris will tell you, “is a feeling of positiveness about being black.

    “We have a purpose – we’re dedicated to our people. And you can’t program people like computers. You can give them ideas and it’s for them to accept them.

    “When I came into my blackness and I realized what was happening, I was angry. But the anger doesn’t do anything constructive. The group realizes problems, talks about it and they know they have to pose solutions.”

    Black awareness has risen in plays, dance and poetry, but aside from jazz groups, not much has been done with music. Which is surprising, since music is such an integral part of black life.

     “I think just about everybody sings,” says Charles Aughtry, one of Imani’s lead singers. Some in the group have had formal training, some have been in church choirs, others have harmonized on street corners.

* * *

ANN HERSELF has been singing since she was a little girl and she took piano lessons too, but she didn’t get seriously into music until 1965, the year she graduated from Lafayette High School.

     At UB, she’s been a student instructor for a black studies course called Liberation Choir, which is under the supervision of Archie Shepp.

     Imani, which means “faith” (Faith is Ann’s middle name), grew out of a repertory group which did a poetry and drama production a little over a year ago with the Black Drama Workshop.

    Ann was in it, one of several theatrical things she’s done (most recent was the Angela Davis play this week), and they asked her to write some music to go with it. Out of that came “El Hajj Malik El Shabazz,” a song for Malcolm X which has become part of the Imani repertoire.

     But last August she’d gathered a workable nucleus of singers. “Like a family it developed,” she says. “We try to get all kinds of people from all walks of life and bind them together.”

    The Humboldt Y offered a second-floor room for twice-a-week rehearsals and Ann encouraged the group to develop its creativity. As a result, the shows have been evolving continually.

    The one they did for the Black Arts Festival last weekend was considerably different from the ones they did for the African Cultural Center last fall and winter or their first big engagement at Erie Community College in November.

    (The ECC show led to two other big ones – one at the Museum of Science on the coldest night of the winter and another at the State University College at Fredonia. “When something good black happens,” Charles Aughtry points out, “it spreads around black people fast.”)

* * *

    THE SHOWS are built around different themes. There’s been one for Malcolm X, one for Attica. Last week’s program was divided into four parts: Innovation, Love, Children and Nation Building.

    Backing the Imani was the Zimbabwe National Rhythm Troupe, a jazz-oriented group from the Watu Center For Urban Design on Jefferson Avenue.

    And like most of the recent shows, there was a bunch of poetry – hard, out-front poems by Jacqueline Diggs and Yvonne Price and Beverly Simms that flash with strength and feeling.

* * *

THE PRIDE and good feeling developed in the first three sections was focused into Nation Building which, Ann says later, is what this is all about.

    “The black people in America are trying to get something together for ourselves,” she explains.

    “‘Cause there ain’t nothin’ here for us,” says Charles Aughtry.

    “Except jail,” says one of the group.

    “And welfare,” says another.

    “That’s another thing,” one of the group says. “Put in there that we’re tryin’ to help ourselves. People are always sayin’ don’t they get enough, they got welfare. Well, we ARE tryin’ to help ourselves.”

    Right now the power and the joy of the group is its vocals. The singers create a spirit and harmony so fine that it’s irresistible, even to themselves.

    The singing was so good in rehearsal this week that the group kept asking Ann to let them do just one more. Phillip Turner collected at least half a dozen happy handslaps after he turned in a light and playful lead on Laura Nyro’s “Emily.”

    Other standout songs are “Brown Baby,” with its moving lyrics by Charles Aughtry and Ann Harris (it’s due out later this summer as a single on the Black Development Foundation’s De-Vel label), and the stand-up-and-dance enthusiasm of the Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There.”

* * *

THE EMPHASIS NOW is making Imani a more self-contained and effective group.

    “A performance is more than just comin’ in here two days a week and rehearsin’ and just goin’ up there,” Ann told the group. “People were impressed. You got an image now.”

    Coming up are shows at UB July 19, at Columbia University at the end of the summer and one for the local Unity Festival, also in late summer. In the works is a fall or winter tour of State University campuses. Imani also plans free summer concerts in the Y parking lot.

    “Another thing is funding,” Ann remarks. “We just can’t deal with this piano, it’s so old. Tell all those people out there we’ll give ‘em a free concert if they’ll give us a piano.”

    “We’ll rock ‘em right on out,” one of the group says.

    “Or,” says another, “right on in.”

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTOS: At top, the Imani Music Workshop in performance at the Humboldt YMCA. Lower left, Ann Harris.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Ann Harris became Faith Harris and the Imani Music Workshop got trimmed down from a mass choir to a touring group with seven singers and a rhythm section. Imani traveled extensively – East Coast, Canada, overseas. They opened for the likes of Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind & Fire.

    Faith went on to do graduate studies at the University of Albany and became a solo jazz vocalist. Now based in Atlanta, she’s still writing and recording. She popped back to Buffalo for a couple nights in 2013 following the release of her first album, “The Time Is Right.” Her latest, “What Matters,” debuted independently earlier this year in celebration of Black History Month. Both are available on her website, faithharrismusic.com.

    As for Charles Aughtry, Google has steered me to someone who graduated from the African American Studies program at UB in the early 1970s, which means he would have known Faith. So if he’s the guy, he went on to lead programs that encouraged minority entrepreneurs and eventually became director of Erie County’s Equal Employment Opportunity office. That Charles Aughtry died at age 56 in 2007, but his obit in The Buffalo News doesn’t mention singing or the Imani Music Workshop.