The name Evelyn Harris is carved in stone, but the woman herself is all heart. From her days performing with Sweet Honey in the Rock, to her foray into the blues with StompBoxTrio, to joining the Young@Heart chorus in 2023, Evelyn’s blazing soul pours into every project she takes on. It’s all a little much, really.

Born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, Evelyn’s acclimation to the Pioneer Valley has been trying, but NCMC has been truly beneficial, providing a sense of security. “Jason has always, always had my back,” she says as we chat at a picnic table in NCMC’s front yard.

Evelyn began teaching at NCMC in 2003, first with private students and then directing the Ku’umba Women’s Choir, and now the Ujima Singers. However, Evelyn didn’t come to Northampton to lead; she has been searching for an environment where she can just sing. The Young@Heart chorus has provided that opportunity at last, although she’s been offered considerable responsibilities as a soloist for the upcoming “Dissecting the Beatles” concert – when you shine, everyone wants to see, or in this case, hear!

In recent years, Evelyn’s guiding light has provided a truly special refuge for the participants of the Ujima Singers program here at NCMC, the Afrocentric chorus that Evelyn conceived during the height of the pandemic. I’ve been honored to facilitate the development of the Ujima singers, and it’s been a life-changing experience for everyone who’s committed themselves to the group. Evelyn was born into Richmond’s culture of African American song forms from gospel to RnB and hip-hop; a culture I can’t imagine as a Black Northamptonite. For African Americans of the Pioneer Valley, the Ujima Singers is a precious space to connect with our musical roots, and with each other! Evelyn teaches us freedom songs by ear, and we share our music with the community as a form of activism, asserting ourselves against fascism and injustice.

As passionately as we hold to our mission, most Ujima Singers aren’t musicians, and singing is an intimate thing. “The fragility of [vocal] music is more universal than I expected,” Evelyn shares, “I want the members of Ujima to share their innermost musical feelings with me in the room.” Evelyn’s musical upbringing was not gentle, and it’s taken serious work from both choir and director to sustain an environment where people feel safe enough to sing publicly. Softening calluses takes time, as does forming the calluses necessary to play the most heartfelt music. This reciprocal work is a complex subject, too much to cover in this highlight, but suffice it to say that the way Ujima sings now is a labor of love, for each other as much as the music.

As closely as Evelyn and I work in the Ujima Singers, I hardly had to schedule an interview to write from, but today I was particularly surprised to learn that, prior to 2017, she didn’t sing the blues! With a voice of pure fire – from deep alto coals to a roaring mids and high soprano flames – the genre is hot on her lips, but it wasn’t until the tragic death of blues guitarist and sound engineer Art Steele that Evelyn found her blues. In tribute to Art, a trio came together in 2017, and hasn’t parted since: the StompBoxTrio. “Basically all African American song forms are the same. If you’re doing R&B, gospel, or jazz, you’re doing blues!” This deeply-rooted relationship between genres, with their grounding in the suffering and musical uplift of the African American people, explains why the blues comes so naturally to Evelyn.