Last week we celebrated the 47th anniversary of Kwanzaa.
A quick lesson about Kwanzaa: To start, it is not a religious holiday, nor is it meant to replace Christmas; it’s an African-American and Pan-African holiday that celebrates family, community and culture. The holiday was created in 1966 by Dr. Maulana Karenga, a professor of Africana studies, author and scholar-activist who wanted a celebration that would honor the values of ancient African cultures and inspire African-Americans who were working for progress during the civil-rights movement.
Kwanzaa draws from the cultures of various African peoples, and its origins are in the first harvest celebrations of Africa, from which it takes its name. The name Kwanzaa is derived from the phrase “matunda ya kwanza,” which means “first fruits” in Swahili. The first-fruits celebrations are recorded in African history as far back as ancient Egypt and Nubia and appear in ancient and modern times in other classical African civilizations such as Ashantiland and Yorubaland. It is estimated that some 18-million African-Americans take part in Kwanzaa. Being one of them, I brought some of my visiting family members to the Kwanzaa event held at the William Way LGBT Community Center last month. One of the foundations of Kwanzaa is the Seven Principles, or Nguzo Saba. At the event, one young man particularly personified the sixth principle, Kuumba: Using creativity and imagination to make your communities better than what you inherited. A former vocal-arts major at the University of the Arts, D’Ontace Keyes wowed the crowd with his operatic rendition of “Your Daddy’s Son” from the musical “Ragtime.” I took a moment to speak to the creative firecracker about life and music.
PGN: So, do you hail from our fair city? DK: No, I’m originally from Chicago. I moved here to Philadelphia to further my education at the University of the Arts. I did my undergrad and graduate studies in vocal jazz and music education. I’ve been here about six years.
PGN: When I heard you sing at the Kwanzaa event, you were singing opera. DK: Yes, I studied both classical and jazz, and I still study to this day.
PGN: What’s your favorite aria to sing? DK: I’m in love with the “Dichterliebe.” It’s actually a German art-song cycle. My favorite part is “Ich grolle nicht.” It’s a really intense song about betrayal. I do a lot of songs that seem to have some type of emotional connection to grief or transitioning.
PGN: Do you sing the songs in German? DK: Yes, I do.
PGN: Do you speak German? DK: [Laughs.] No, I can only sing it!
PGN: Tell me about growing up in Chicago. What was your childhood like? DK: Well, my mother was abusive. So at age 12, I was put into the foster-care system, where I remained for several years. Even when I first came to Philadelphia, I was still a ward of the state. But I was always into music and singing and knew from a young age that I wanted to go to a performing-arts school and pursue a career in the arts. I managed to go to the Chicago Academy for the Arts, a private school that you had to audition to get into and the tuition was $20,000. The school was nicknamed “The Selected 150” because they only chose 150 students and you had to get invited back each year.
PGN: Did you get a scholarship? DK: Yes, my junior year. I wanted to go freshman year but my foster mother’s home was in the suburbs, three hours from the school. I would’ve had to commute alone and they weren’t willing to let me do that. So I went to the local high school for the first two years and I did choir and band. It was actually my choir teacher who introduced me to the “Dichterliebe,” which I used as my audition piece to eventually get into the performing-arts school. I got in with a full ride!
PGN: And you commuted six hours a day? DK: Yes, I was very dedicated!
PGN: Back to the family. Any siblings? DK: Yes, I have one brother and four sisters. Most of us have different fathers. You know that song “Papa was a Rolling Stone”? Well, that was my mother. There were only three of us that she abused: me, my little brother and the sister I share a father with. She used to call us the three blind mice.
PGN: Did she have drug problems? DK: Yes, she was a nurse and she used to abuse prescription drugs and she had problems with alcohol as well, which was the main source of the problem. It got to the point where I realized we had to get out of the house. I knew from a young age that I would have to figure out “the system” so I could save myself. That I needed to somehow get child-services involved and tell the truth, nothing but the truth, express the danger that we were in and impress upon them that the family was not better off together. It was very intense.
PGN: Who did you tell? DK: I think people sort of knew. We would go to school with bruises on our faces, hungry and fatigued. There were times when she put us out of the house and we would sleep outside on the back porch and people would see us, so the whole neighborhood knew. Eventually it was a number of people coming together to get me out of that situation.
PGN: What was the final straw? DK: Out of the three of us, my little brother got the brunt of it. The final straw was a doorknob that was thrown that hit my brother in the eye. There was a neighbor down the street who we had sought out a few times before when we sent my mother to jail for battery. I sent her once and my sister sent her once before.
PGN: Sheesh, you would think they take you away after the first incident. DK: Yeah, you would think so, but it didn’t happen. She had her ways of talking her way out of things. After the doorknob incident, the [Department of Children and Family Services] took us away and first transitioned us to people who were somewhat family. Two of my sisters were over 18 so they were on their own. Two others went with their godmother, my brother went with his grandmother and I was all alone. It was probably the best decision I ever made for myself. I had a premonition of what I wanted my life to be and this allowed me to do it. Because I was in the system, I got financial help with school in order to further my education, so if I had been placed with family it probably wouldn’t have been the best thing, especially because I didn’t find a lot of acceptance with other family members around my sexuality and my demeanor. I also looked different than most of my family because I was mixed. My dad was white and Mexican and my mother is mixed as well.
PGN: What was your favorite thing to do as a kid or your favorite game? DK: Hmmm … I don’t know … My childhood was taken from me at such an early age, I lived in such fear that most of my time was occupied trying to figure out how to be strategic enough to make it to the next day. I was the more independent one. I’d actually challenge my mother more than the others. I remember one time when she came at me and I stepped back and was like — excuse my language — “Go ahead and try to hit me, bitch!” I was ready to box her because I’d hit my limit. I was just like, “I can’t take this anymore.” I knew I had to get out and, to this day, even though I’m the one who went into the system, I’m the only one who got away and made it through college, became successful.
PGN: Did you move around or were you in just one foster home? DK: Just the one, mostly. In my senior year, I moved away from my foster mom in the suburbs. I was in the process of coming out and she didn’t necessarily offer a safe environment to do so. I was also tired of the six-hour commute each day so I moved in with one of my sisters. I’d only seen the family about once a year growing up so they had no clue who I was as a person, what made me happy, who I was becoming, and there was a lot of stuff that I wasn’t willing to share that I’m still not comfortable sharing. So it still felt like a foster situation because they didn’t really know me. I never went back after I graduated because my relationship with my foster mom had begun to grow apart even before I moved into the city. I had a job so I was rarely home anyway and there were things that she required of me that I wasn’t able to provide because I was focused on myself and my life, my education and my craft. After that senior year, I came here to Philadelphia for school.
PGN: Were your problems with your sister surrounding your sexuality? DK: No, I think they all kind of knew already, so I didn’t have to go through that whole “Oh, I’m gay” phase. It was more different personalities.
PGN: Any happy childhood memories? DK: My grandmother. She couldn’t talk because she had had a stroke but she always smiled whenever I went over and she would sing and hum. I have a strong connection to gospel music. It’s part of my craft; I grew up in the church, and I have a great belief in God. There were a couple of songs that she would sing and hum to me that I still remember to this day.
PGN: Any other extracurricular activities in school? DK: I ran cross-country track! And I did a couple of plays, as well as performing in show choir. And marching band, I loved marching band! I was in the drum line. I was the cymbals guy — you know — the one who did all the dancing. And at the conservatory, I did a lot of competition singing.
PGN: What’s that? DK: You represent your school and have to sing certain required pieces. You also have to sight-read a piece. I was learning more classical and jazz pieces and, since I was living in Chicago at that time, I started doing singing gigs around town and learned about Boystown and the youth center, and started getting involved in coordinating different LGBT events.
PGN: Name two jazz standards that you sing. DK: That’s so easy! Everyone knows me for singing “Blue Skies” and “Lullaby of Birdland.” [Laughs.] I tear those songs up!
PGN: When did you sing last, aside from Kwanzaa? DK: I was part of Josh Schonewolf’s Songbird competition at Tabu. It was a great experience.
PGN: And what do you do now? DK: Ha! I work all the time, seven days a week. I’m trying to change that for 2014. I work for Y-HEP, the Youth Health Empowerment Project. I am the program associate for the “I am … ” program. I work with and provide preventative health services for young men of color between the ages of 13-29 who have sex with men. On the weekends, I work in retail at DSW — I shouldn’t! I’ve worked at both places in different capacities ever since I’ve been in Philly. Nationally, I sit on the board of HIV Prevention Trials Network and I’m also the vice chair of Philadelphia Black Gay Pride. Those are both volunteer jobs but I spend a large portion of time working on them. And I gig whenever I have a chance to, which is ultimately what I love to do.
PGN: Time for some arbitrary questions. Which member of the family has had the greatest influence on your way of thinking? DK: I would have to say my aunt, because I remember a time when I was in high school and she was driving me somewhere. I was telling her my plan to get out of Chicago, because I always had a plan, and her reaction was “Go! Go, and never come back.” She was the first one to encourage me that way and I’ve never gone back. I’ve been offered jobs in Chicago but I’ll never go back.
PGN: Any phobias? DK: Failure. I don’t like letting people down. I’m the kind of person who likes to give 150 percent to anything I do. I get anxiety if I set a goal that I’m not able to reach.
PGN: Which one of Snow White’s seven dwarves would you be? DK: Bashful! I get embarrassed really easily. It doesn’t take much to turn me red!
PGN: Worst scar? DK: [Holds up hand showing one finger shorter than the others.] When I was a kid, I was riding a bike and crashed into a garage door. When I woke up, the tip of my finger was missing. It was somewhere in the bike.
PGN: Sorry I asked! My stomach just did a 360 … DK: [Laughs.] Imagine how I felt when I saw it!
PGN: Any relation to Alicia Keys? DK: I wish!
PGN: Me too. You could have hooked me up, before she did something silly like marrying her husband. DK: Yeah, she spells it differently anyway. I am related to jazz saxophonist Kirk Whalum. He was Whitney Houston’s opening act for several years.
PGN: What’s the background on your computer screen? DK: Myself! I did a photo shoot for a project I’ve been working on that’s going to launch this year. I’m not ready to disclose exactly what it is yet, but I’ve taken all the knowledge I’ve accrued from the various jobs I’ve had and groups I’ve worked with to start a company that handles social and community events and projects.
PGN: When are you most at peace? DK: When I’m listening to gospel music. There’s something about it that just settles me.
PGN: What about the dichotomy of having homophobic rhetoric in many of the black churches while having choir directors/members who are gayer than Little Richie? DK: It is a challenge. But for me, I find that a lot of the churches that are “affirming” change the word to accommodate the congregation and, for me, I prefer the word to be more authentic. So I go in and get my teaching and I leave. I just am who I am and it works for me.
PGN: Describe a word beginning with the first letter of your name that sums you up. DK: Determined.
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