{"id":12456,"date":"2014-03-08T13:23:44","date_gmt":"2014-03-08T19:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/?p=12456"},"modified":"2014-03-12T13:24:04","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T18:24:04","slug":"harambee-2014-black-excellence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/2014\/03\/08\/harambee-2014-black-excellence\/","title":{"rendered":"Harambee 2014: Black Excellence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Sunday, March 2, <strong>African American Student Association (<\/strong><strong>AASA)<\/strong> put on a spectacle of dance, song, and rhythm in the annual <strong>Harambee<\/strong> performance. Afterwards, food was served for the many family members, students, and staff who came out to watch the show.<\/p>\n<p>The night started off with music, as Mod 21 sang \u201cLift Every Voice and Sing,\u201d often called \u201cThe Black National Anthem.\u201d Yasmine Gordon followed with \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d before Mama She She performed. \u201cMama She She is Chinyere&#8217;s mother who has a group called the Drum Divas, which is a group of African Drummers,\u201d says Alexis Currie, AASA Vice President. The group got the audience involved, encouraging spectators to chant lines and later bringing people on stage to learn a dance.<\/p>\n<p>As Harambee rolled on, a skit began, taking place in a class of students learning about African-American history. The skit offered natural segues into different dances, all tied to African-American culture.<\/p>\n<p>Art was not the only thing showcased, however, as African-American history played a prominent part. Part of the skit showed the discrimination blacks faced in the South when Al-Jalil Gault, playing a customer, was refused by a waiter, played by Joey Longo. In addition, Jose Muratalla portrayed Malcolm X while George Harris stepped in as Martin Luther King, Jr. \u201cI was honored to have the opportunity to portray MLK Jr.,\u201d says George, AASA\u2019s historian. \u201cI feel like Jose did an excellent job of capturing Malcolm X\u2019s revolutionary nature as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The event was the culmination of much hard work and preparation. \u201cHarambee went beyond my expectations this year,\u201d says Alexis. \u201cI never doubt my board or Harambee&#8217;s participants, but we ran into many bumps along the way.\u201d She added, \u201cI also am so grateful that Mod 21 and SDAC came and played as major contributions to Harambee with their excellent performances.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHarambee in Swahili literally means \u2018all put together,\u2019\u201d says Amber Acquaye, a sophomore representative. \u201cWe all came together and made something great. I think that&#8217;s what Harambee is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Sunday, March 2, African American Student Association (AASA) put on a spectacle of dance, song, and rhythm in the annual Harambee performance. Afterwards, food&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1019],"tags":[2266],"coauthors":[1996],"class_list":["post-12456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-imsanews","tag-harambee"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12456"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12512,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12456\/revisions\/12512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12456"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}