NCMC presents “Evelyn Harris Community Sing-In” at First Churches
The Northampton Community Music Center presents the “Evelyn Harris Community Sing-In” at First Churches of Northampton on Thursday April 30th at 7pm. The event will feature the Ujima Singers in performance, and will reunite alums of the Ku’umba Women’s Choir which Evelyn directed for 15 years. All will be welcome to join in song as we revisit some of Evelyn’s standard and beloved repertoire. The event is free and open to the public.
The late Evelyn Harris celebrated her 20th year as a faculty member of NCMC last June, and performed with the Afrocentric music collective that she founded, the Ujima Singers, just a week before her sudden passing on December 16th, 2025. To honor Evelyn’s legacy, and promote the power of music as activism, the Ujima Singers will present a free program of acapella music that Evelyn taught at NCMC, inviting the Northampton community to lift every voice and sing. This program will feature music from Sweet Honey In The Rock and popular spirituals and freedom songs of the African American canon.
In 2005, Evelyn was hired at NCMC to teach private voice lessons and to succeed Justina Golden in directing the women's vocal ensemble A Little Lunch Music. In 2006, this ensemble was reimagined to better represent Evelyn's specific strengths and background and was renamed the Ku'umba Women's Choir. In the wake of COVID in 2022, this ensemble disbanded. For years, Evelyn and Executive Director Jason Trotta had been envisioning a program that would provide space for connection and collaborative expression among members of the Valley's BIPOC community, inspired by exploration of the music of the African-American diaspora and civil rights movement that had been the focus of Evelyn's life work. After many years of planning and discussion, the Ujima Singers was born in 2023. The Ujima Singers performance blurb states:
“We've come together to create greater visibility and musical community for Black and Indigenous People of Color (BIPoC) in the valley. We sing freedom songs, Negro spirituals, and R&B with a genuine energy that comes from the love and community that we foster as a collective. The vast majority of the Ujima Singers are not trained musicians; the collective is open to community members of all vocal experience levels/abilities. Since our first rehearsal in September of 2023, director Evelyn Harris coaxed the spirit loose from each new Ujima Singer, with equal parts good-humor and ferocity, and we're excited to share our spirited sound with you!”
The group continues to provide a powerful, intergenerational creative space under the direction of Northampton-born artist Indë Francis. As reported by Carolyn Brown of the Daily Hampshire Gazette in the 1/25/26 article about the late director’s memorial service at Bombyx in Florence, “Celebrating Evelyn Harris,”
The Ujima Singers, a chorus of BIPOC performers that operate out of the Northampton Community Music Center, performed the hymn “When I Die,” composed by former Sweet Honey in the Rock member Ysaye M. Barnwell.
Indë Francis, the group’s director, explained that their last rehearsal with Harris wasn’t “a real rehearsal” — rather, it was a grief circle, during which group members talked about their experiences with death, because Harris wanted them to learn and understand the song.
“It was a really funny and serendipitous thing,” Francis said. “Her spirit knew even though she didn’t.”
“She was really, really passionate about her music, her art, and what she was teaching,” Francis said, “and she would not settle for people who didn’t understand why they were singing what they were singing.”
About the Northampton Community Music Center
Founded in 1986, the Northampton Community Music Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization whose mission is to foster the love and pursuit of music within our community through quality education, performances and activities that are accessible to all. NCMC serves people of all ages, abilities, and financial backgrounds. Over the decades since its founding, NCMC has never turned a student away for lack of funds, because everyone should have access to the healing power of music! In FY 2025, we provided over $70,000 in scholarships to more than 230 local music students. Our financial aid program is funded by individuals, businesses and foundations alike.
