Encouraging Martin Luther King Jr.'s drum beat at Ursinus College

In the last event on Monday during Ursinus College’s observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Dr. Nikitah Okembe-RA Imani delivered a keynote address to students and faculty in Bomberger Hall. Okembe-RA Imani encouraged attendees to regard King and his mission as a dynamic force to be fully embraced and enacted today, rather than merely, annually remembered.

A faculty member at James Madison University, Okembe-RA Imani is “a veteran of more than 18 years in the Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist movements,” according to an Ursinus College press release.

Okembe-RA Imani opened his address by acknowledging that Jan. 17 also marked the 1961 assassination of Congo’s Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba, Okembe-RA Imani said, was a contemporary of King who was among those concerned with “the moral character of struggle…struggle using means that were moral and ethical. So you not only waged a struggle against the forces of oppression, you also maintained your personal and collective spiritual integrity in that process.”

 He shared portions of his Lumumba’s Congo Independence Day speech delivered June 30, 1960: “We are going to rule not by the peace of guns and bayonets but by a peace of the heart and the will.”

Okembe-RA Imani speech, “Can You Hear the Sound of the Drum?”, referred to King’s 1968 sermon, “The Drum Major Instinct.”

“Not only is he delivering a sermon, but he is drawing on a theological tradition from a Methodist preacher, who happens to be white, named J. Wallace Hamilton. And Minister Hamilton in giving this sermon, is trying to teach a lesson about something he calls ‘the drum major instinct.’ So Dr. King takes this sermon, which is already in the theological literature, and he actually molds it to the purpose of his time and his context.”

The genial Okembe-RA Imani recited, his voice raising slightly during his impassioned delivery: “‘If you get somebody to deliver the eulogy (at King’s funeral) … I don’t want them to talk about the Nobel Peace Prize. I don’t want them to talk about awards’—by then he had hundreds of them.

“‘… Say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace.’”

In saying this, Okembe-RA Imani noted that King wanted to take the spotlight off him and emphasize “something bigger than me.”

“Sometimes the worst thing that happens to an activist is to be memorialized,” Okembe-RA Imani said. “What happens when you build a monument? Whatever we’re going to memorialize is done. Dr. King’s legacy, Dr. King’s ‘dream,’ if you will, Dr. King’s vision, which is a better way of describing it, is not gone. It’s not irrelevant, it’s not done, it’s not completed, and Dr. King doesn’t want to set up a scenario where he’s going to be celebrated and somehow not followed.”

 “Dr. King is saying, ‘If you don’t follow, then I may have lived in vain.’ We don’t want him to have lived in vain.”

King’s referring to himself as a drum major is deliberate and significant, Okembe-RA Imani said. In part, it has religious ties.

“In that sermon, (King) draws from Mark 10:35, ” Okembe-RA Imani said.

“Two people (James and John) who are asking the Lord for key positions in heaven,” said Okembe-RA Imani. “And the Lord says to them, ‘Do you know what you’re asking? Do you really want to follow me? “Drinking from the cup” means, do you want to go through the path that I went through? Do you want to understand the suffering that I went through?’

“Of course, sometimes we say we do. We do the same thing for people that we honor.”

Humans aren’t always satisfied with just belonging to the group, Okembe-RA Imani said. They want the “top spot,” to be someone important, to be the “VIP.”

“The drum major, at one level, is the leader of the band. There’s no such thing as a solo drum major. Again, Dr. King is drawing attention to the fact that ‘I’m not out here by myself; I’m needing a band,’” Okembe-RA Imani said, noting that the drum major/band reference is also a metaphor for the civil rights movement.

As the leader, King gave the movement direction, timing and told them how to play.

“Dr. King said we’re going to play in the key of love.”

 With the drum major, King, “positioned at the head,” the band director, God, “is the ultimate authority.”

Okembe-RA Imani said King was put in that position by God, “and if He has a place for me, mean he must have a place for you.

“If you’re in the band you have an instrument, and when you have an instrument, you’d better play it. Do you have an instrument? Can you write? Do you have an instrument? Can you think? Do you have an instrument? Can you educate? Do you have an instrument? Can you visit somebody in prison? Do you have an instrument? Can you help out the elderly?”

The symbolism of his chosen instrument—a drum—is also key to King’s message.

In the African tradition—the drum had two purposes: communication and to set the stage, Okembe-RA Imani said.

Regarding communication, “‘the talking drums,’ they were called.” Okembe-RA Imani said. “When you heard the drum, it spoke to your consciousness; it spoke to your mentality. It spoke to your spirituality and made you move. It’s an energy principle. It’s a cosmic principle. We’ll start vibrating on the same frequency.”

Okembe-RA Imani remarked that there’s little unity in today’s communication. People are moving on different frequencies, and communication has devolved into talking at each other rather than an inclusive conversation, he said.

When it comes to setting the stage, “it means something’s happening. Calling out when there’s pain. Calling out when there’s suffering,” Okembe-RA Imani said.

Like a song that a person listens to in order to cheer up, “the society needed to be uplifted,” Okembe-RA Imani said. “King and his band played despite the noise and distraction in the country at the time. Somehow the sound of the band if it’s all unified and all at the right time and all in sync, it will begin to rise above all of the noise and distractions and everything, and you’ll be able to hear the sound.”

Although “they killed the drum major, if the band was true, there’s still a band. Everyone remembers the tune,” Okembe-RA Imani said.

 “We ask where are the leaders? They’re in the band.” God, the band director, will hear a new drum major from among those still playing.

“Are you playing?” Okembe-RA Imani asked. “King left us some instruments. He left us the music. He left us a world that needed to hear this song. He taught us how we could come together and perform. Let’s play.”