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The room is dimly lit. A vibrantly colored cloth hangs behind the microphone where spoken word artist Venus Jones stands. She ask if anyone in the room knows about Kwanzaa. Not many raise their hands.
This is why she has come to a Tampa coffeehouse.
It's estimated that about 2 million people celebrate Kwanzaa each year in this country. The weeklong celebration, which starts today, was created in 1966 as a way to heal and bring cultural pride to blacks after the civil rights movement.
But take a closer look at the principles guiding Kwanzaa, and they go beyond the black experience, Jones argues. It was this revelation that led her to create her latest spoken word album: Kwanzaa, 7 Days 7 Principles, Poems and Affirmations for Everyday Living.
The album is a mix of affirmations, song and meditational music — all set to the Nguzo Saba, or "Seven Principles" of Kwanzaa, which are unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.
The hope is that by making the principles more universal, more people will benefit.
"At the end of the day, we know unity is unity," Jones said on a recent day. "You can't switch or change the concept of unity, and who can't benefit from that?"
For example, on the track called Creativity, Jones' voice is heard over a simple drumbeat telling listeners to "Let go of procrastination" and "Take 100 percent responsibility for your lives."
The album is filled with similar plainspoken, easily understood affirmations. For Purpose, Jones recites the Haitian proverb, "The dog has four feet but he does not walk them in four different roads." And for Creativity, she offers one from the United States that says, "Human creativity itself is the image of God."
Jones, an actress and author of She Rose, began celebrating Kwanzaa in 1995, but it wasn't until 2003 that she began to think about the synthesis of affirmations and poetry with holiday as the backdrop.
"I wanted to use it as a vehicle for my own development and out of that I knew that through my healing, others will be healed," Jones said. "This is not about necessarily a black or white thing; it's a healing thing."
About 30 million people worldwide celebrate Kwanzaa, according to the African American Cultural Center in Los Angeles, an organization headed by Kwanzaa founder Maulana Karenga.
Celebrating takes many forms, including lighting candles, small gifts and family gatherings. Approaching its 43rd birthday, Kwanzaa has drawn some of the vestiges of other holidays, including greeting cards and a postage stamp.
Yet recently some have reported a decline in its popularity among a younger generation of African-Americans who are not closely related to the civil rights struggle.
Filmmaker M.K. Asante Jr.'s film The Black Candle attempts to reignite curiosity about the holiday.
The film, narrated by Maya Angelou, explores the historical context of Kwanzaa as it relates to the African-American experience. The movie is set to air at noon today on TV One.
"I think what Venus has tapped into and what others have long said is that the principles of Kwanzaa are universal," said Asante, a English professor at Morgan State University. "Unity isn't a black principle. It might mean something different in terms of African history, but ultimately that's a principle we should all be engaged in."
And at Sacred Grounds on a recent night, the audience of mostly white faces nodded in agreement as Jones recites a quote from Maulana Karenga: "Any particular message that is good for a particular people, if it is human in its content and ethical in its grounding, speaks not just to that people," she said. "It speaks to the world."
Nicole Hutcheson can be reached at nhutcheson@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3405.
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