Note to DL Hughley: KWANZAA Has Theme Music!

15 Dec Note to DL Hughley: KWANZAA Has Theme Music!

I was a bit put off by his sketch about Kwanzaa today. He actually got a Jewish composer to sing some bootleg Broadway cheese because he couldn’t find a decent Kwanzaa song. Like Black folks couldn’t be counted on to sing about their own holiday!

Then I realized: It’s not entirely his fault; these songs are tough to find.

So I’m posting this one: it was on a Polygram promo called Mad Tidings. It was sung by Emage, a talented trio of young ladies form Oakland, Kimbre’ly Evans, Mykah Montgomery (of the jazz family of Montgomerys) and Taura Jackson–all now enjoying careers as writers, vocalists and tour/session singers. It’s from 1993, DL-long before you had the show!

I hope there is some follow-up about this because the song educates about the holiday in a very effective way–to his point that “maybe more people would celebrate Kwanzaa if it had a song”.

Mykah and Taura from Emage are on Facebook; maybe they can get it up on iTunes or some other outlet so the song can spread in time for Kwanzaa ’08. Oh yeah–and Mykah is featured in my book Put Your Dreams First talking about how she learned from the business so she could work in it on her own terms. Not sure if you can get the song from the post so in the event you cannot, I will make sure they get copies of it–and circle back to you.

Happy Kwanzaa everyone!
Thembisa

01 Happy Kwanzaa.m4a