Kuumba is creativity--actually something we have been observing throughout Kwanzaa. Yesterday we completed our pouch project. This involved making homemade beads with oven bake clay, designing on paper some pouches, me cutting out and sewing felt in accordance with these (approximate) designs, and (again, me) sewing the beads to the pouches in the places chosen by my daughters.
We also spent a lot of time listening to music. I talked the girls into giving the Disney CDs a rest and instead we listened to selections that I think capture a certain sense of creativity without boundaries.
For example, I put on Regina Carter's "Paganini: After a Dream" and the daKAH Hip Hop Orchestra's live recording from San Francisco, Alice Coltrane's new "Translinear Light" and Queen Latifah's "Dana Owens Album." I streamed from my computer the fourth program of the "American Mavericks" series, "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing," all about the flirtations between the worlds of classical and jazz music. (And extra nice since one of the folks interviewed is our own Twin Cities composer and scholar William Banfield from St. Thomas.)
As low key as I could I tried to relate what we were hearing to their own lives in ways my four year olds could understand: Did yo know Granny's Daddy used to play the violin like this lady playing now? Yes, her name is Queen Latifah--she named herself that because she feels powerful like a queen. That song there was written by a man named George--Yes, just like our president who's on our money named George--But did you know that your Granny plays this song on her piano? Yes, that instrument does sound a little like it's from the "Alladin" movie...
Anyway, that's what I wish for my daughters--To develop their creativities without regard to that creativity being "for girls" or "for boys," White or Black, traditional or avant-garde, "popular" or "scholarly."
(OK, maybe the last wish is more for me!)
Posted by perry032 at January 1, 2005 03:29 PM | TrackBack