When Dr. Maulana Karenga created Kwanzaa in 1966, he aimed to knit together black communities tattered by racial injustice and isolated from their African heritage. Karenga turned to West Africa and the language of Swahili to coin the term for a holiday celebration that means “first fruits of the harvest.” Kwanzaa unfolds over the seven day period from December 26 to January 1 and breathes through seven principles: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith. Though planted in Black Nationalist soil, Kwanzaa eventually flowered in black bourgeois America and has been globally recognized. A new documentary film, “Black Candle,” made by M.K. Asante and narrated by Maya Angelou, traces Kwanzaa’s origins in the black power movement to its flourishing as a holiday embraced by 40 million people worldwide.

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   Maulana Karenga celebrating at the Rochester Institute of Technology on December 12, 2003

In the United States, Kwanzaa has boiled or simmered as the nation’s racial temperature has changed. In its first couple of decades, Kwanzaa called attention to African roots and American fruits as its celebrations seamlessly united Kente clothe and homegrown cultural consciousness. Kwanzaa has prospered, it seems, when blacks have endured tough times. White supremacy in the ’60s, racial backlash in the ’70s, and anti-multiculturalism in the ’80s all lent energy to the premise of pan-Africanism: that blacks the world over should unite in common opposition to oppression. But when black folk make progress and enjoy spurts of success, reclaiming African roots is often seen as romantic and a relic of past struggle.

In accounting for Kwanzaa’s shifting fortunes, we must note the tension between a pan-Africanist and a Diasporic black identity: while the former voices common African values and a black homecoming, the latter speaks of lack, exile and migration — in short, a loss of home and what it means to black identity and the rituals that sustain it. Kwanzaa, as with all similar celebrations, is tied to the fate of the people it represents. Rituals rise and fall according to social needs and political desires. Given the Diasporic dimensions of black identity in America – where folk who’ve migrated from Africa, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, South America and the like meet native-born blacks — the erosion of the ties that bind is predictable, even as the celebrations that hold black identity together change and reflect the broadening of what it means to be black.

The political climate affects black rituals too. A lot has been made of the number of posts that black life confronts: post-soul, post-black, post-racial, and post-civil rights. In this era of black posts, pillars fall, whether civil rights leaders whose approach is viewed as passé, or as rituals of black cohesion are viewed by many blacks as quaint and largely irrelevant. A lot of that talk picked up pace with the election of Barack Obama as president, a monumental event that eclipsed black fears in some quarters (racism could no longer keep black folk from the big prizes of American life), exacerbated them in others (because of his success the bulk of blacks who continue to struggle might be forgotten). What’s a people – and how is “people” exactly defined in such conditions – to do?

In times like these, when the politics of race have shifted, celebrations like Kwanzaa take a hit in mainstream black life, or at least the black life that’s on display in the mainstream. But they often rev up in smaller, more intimate spaces, and in quarters not often observed by mainstream eyes where the holiday has always thrived. Ironically enough, Kwanzaa gets canonized in mainstream black circles –for instance, it arrives on postage stamps that commemorate its existence, a thin slice of memory licked by black tongues that otherwise may not taste its fruits in ceremonial practices. And it is observed on college campuses where students of all races are welcomed to celebrate black life and identity in a hospitable environment whose emphasis is often less on politics than potluck dinners.

But the holiday’s most faithful practitioners proclaim its original intent: bridging black folk across the chasms of land, language, water and religion as they forge solidarity in resisting obstacles and embracing opportunities to their common destiny. As the devotees of Kwanzaa understand, those aspirations have never been of much interest to the mainstream during any period of the nation’s history. And the increased fortunes of black folk cause many of them to focus their energy and attention elsewhere. But for its true believers, Kwanzaa is as relevant and necessary now as it’s ever been.

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[Enlarge] About The Author: Michael Eric Dyson (born October 23, 1958, in Detroit, Michigan) is an American writer, radio host, and professor at Georgetown University. Dyson has a Ph.D. in religion from Princeton University. He is an ordained Baptist minister. Dyson taught at DePaul University, Chicago Theological Seminary, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Columbia University and Brown University, before going to the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. There he was the Avalon Professor of Humanities. Since 2007, Dyson has been University Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University, teaching courses in theology, English, and African American studies. A University Professorship is said to be the highest position that a faculty member can have at Georgetown. From January 2006 to February 2007 Dyson was the host of a daily syndicated talk radio program, The Michael Eric Dyson Show, which aired on weekdays from 10AM to 1PM (EST) on the Syndication One Radio Network (owned and operated by Radio One). He is also a regular commentator on National Public Radio, CNN, and the HBO TV program Real Time with Bill Maher. Dyson is best known for his commentary on American culture, particularly as it pertains to African Americans. Dyson uses the terms “Afristocracy” and “Ghettocracy” to describe a bifurcation in American black society. He is also a leading scholar on hip-hop music and the culture that surrounds it, as well as its roots in African and African-American cultures and influence on American popular culture. Dyson is well known to repeat his famous line, “Go Ahead. Axe me a question.”

The BBC’s African Perspective programme is investigating what life is like for some of an estimated 20 million Africans who live in the diaspora.

Nick Davis in Kingston finds out what made some Africans voluntarily make the former slave island of Jamaica their home.

Christopher Columbus landed on the beach at Rio Bueno on Jamaica’s north coast in 1494 and forever changed the history of this island.

The Spanish arrived and brought the Africans with them. They imported slaves throughout their 160-year stay and the practice continued under British rule.

Some of my students sometimes don’t seem very proud to be called African, they associate the place with poverty, starvation — Anthropologist Barry Chevannes, University of the West Indies

Jamaica’s national motto is “Out of many, one people” – a description of the island’s multi-ethnic background.

But with over 90% of the 2.6m population being black, the country looks African.

But does it feel African?

“It looked like home to me when I first arrived. Sometimes I’d make a mistake and speak to people in my Ghanaian language and then I’d suddenly realise, this isn’t a Ghana,” says Sophie Dawes who grew up in what was formerly called the Gold Coast, now Ghana.

‘Jamaica heads, Nigeria tails’

The 74-year-old grandmother met her husband – a well known Jamaican academic and writer, Neville Dawes – when she was at university in Ghana. They eventually moved to the West Indies with their young family more than 40 years ago.

Nigerian Olalekan Abbass — We basically tossed a coin and said where do we go? Jamaica heads, Nigeria tails Nigerian Olalekan Abbass

For Olalekan Abbass who came from Abelkuta in Nigeria’s Ogun state it was a similar story.

He met and married his wife Arlene, who is Jamaican, in London but they had a dilemma.

“We basically tossed a coin and said where do we go? Jamaica heads, Nigeria tails.

It was heads and we came down.”

Jamaicans have a strong connection with Africa.

The look to the motherland started in the years of slavery. Traditions, rituals, religious beliefs and even language were all reinforced by the waves of Africans shipped in to keep the island’s sugar plantations going.

But after emancipation, it was not really until Marcus Garvey during the 1920s and 1930s that an island with wider black consciousness took hold.

He told his supporters to “look to Africa“, and his message and his calls for repatriation were taken up by descendants of African slaves and became the cornerstone of a new religion, Rastafari.

Miles away

“I was in college in America and whilst studying I became friends with a good brother, he would say to me why are you acting Jamaican, but I would say to him, why are you acting like an African?” says Makonnen who came from Guinea Bisseau and is a follower of Rastafari.

Makonnen’s dreadlocks are covered under a wicker hat.

He is always well dressed but this is a special day. He is in a silk shirt.

The face of Ethiopia’s Emperor, Haile Selassie is proudly emblazoned across it.

Today would’ve been the 116th birthday of His Imperial Majesty – the most important date for Rastafarians.

He works as a herbalist and a counsellor out of a health food store in Ocho Rios, a busy resort town on Jamaica’s north coast but he has taken some time off to show me what reminds him most of home.

We head to a little fishing village. As we arrive the boats are heading back from sea. A scene that Makonnen says is repeated thousands of miles away in Africa.

Shared love of food

African and Caribbean people share a love of food

“The whole scenario here is about the fisherman – they go out in these little locally made boats, they bring in the catch and it has been cleaned.

“The way the huts are built, look it’s just like Africa. They cook the sweetest seafood right here and down the road they turn cornmeal into what we call fufu.”

A love of food is something that both African and Caribbean people share. And for the people who have made Jamaica home, many of the dishes are not that foreign.

“The food is very similar to what we eat in Nigeria. There’s a little difference in how it’s prepared but it’s so close; the ingredients are the same. I went to the doctor the other day he said you need to change your diet.

“I said change it to what? Everything they have here is the same as what we eat back home,” says Nigerian Olalaken Abass.

“Nigerians talk about nyam – to eat, and Jamaicans say the same word in Patois [Jamaican creole language] so there’s lot of similarities in how we speak,” says Sophie Dawes

Like wildfire

Jamaicans are slowly identifying with African culture

But despite some of the cultural and historical links between Africa and Jamaica some people do not want to accept the link.

“Some of my students sometimes don’t seem very proud to be called African, they associate the place with poverty, starvation. They often think who’d wanna be an African,” says Barry Chevannes, an anthropologist at the University of the West Indies.

But Olalaken says that the people in Jamaica need to look beyond the poverty, corruption and HIV and Aids headlines to the real Africa.

By doing so, they will be able to more easily embrace their African roots.

“There needs to be a little bit more of an introduction to the real African culture. Recently the Jamaican public have been watching African movies which have caught on like wildfire – they haven’t seen things like this before and slowly they are identifying with African culture.”