I carry Dubsie past the intersection of 11th and Kenyon to her Saturday morning music class. This is Columbia Heights, where the kids (mostly black) go to Tubman Elementary School and the professionals (mostly white) go to little hipster joints and pay $14 for a pork roll bialy sandwich.
Outside of BloomBars is a cluster of jogging strollers. We hurry in because it’s cold. Class has already started and the narrow room is packed — maybe 25 little kids and even more assorted parents, sitting on the gymnasium mats and filling the benches that line both sides of the room.
Baba Ras D pulls everyone together at Harambee.
Opposite the entry door is a little stage, and on it are a sprinkling of children and a tall, middle aged black man who is smiling broadly in spite of a missing front tooth. His name is Baba Ras D, and his long dreadlocks swing back and forth as he bangs on a drum and sings “This Little Light of Mine” in a deep bass voice.
Most of the children have a shaker or tambourine in their hand and about half the people are singing along with Baba Ras. The class is called Harambee, which means “pull together” in Swahili, and on his website Baba Ras describes his creation as a “practice of hope, possibility and compassion.” We’ve only been here a couple of times and Dubsie is still a little stunned by the noise and the abundance of children, and the guitars and keyboards hung on the walls, and the half a boat hanging from the ceiling (that’s the DJ booth), and especially the big ecstatic black man with the dreadlocks and beard.
I smile at the polite black guy with short hair who is manning a little desk, throw $10 in the donation bowl, and hurry Dubsie out of her boots and jacket and add them to the soggy collection of clothes and bags on coat rack, surrounded by a puddle of melting street slush.
Baba Ras transitions into “The Wheels on the Bus” without his smile dimming a single watt. I find a yellow egg-shaped shaker for Dubsie and a spot for us on the floor, and clasp Dubsie’s shaker hand in mine and follow along with the hand motions as we sing along. Maybe four parents in the room are black. The overwhelming majority are white, some still in their Patagonia or Arc’teryx coats and some stripped down to T-shirts against the rising puppy-pile warmth. The parents sitting on the gym mats, I’ve noticed, almost always sing; those against the walls encourage their children to sing but themselves tend to just watch, in contrast to Baba Ras, who is working so hard that he’s sweating through his shirt.
When I first came, I assumed that this was Baba Ras D’s place and that the mild-mannered guy at the front was his assistant. I turned out I had it backward — the guy at the front is John Chambers, who left his corporate P.R. job and founded BloomBars eight years ago. Baba Ras D is just one of many performers who circulates through during the week.
BloomBars is a desperate affair by the standards of the salaried audience. The mostly volunteer staff get a bed to crash in at Chambers’ house. It’s a hip-hop-spoken-word-film-exhibition-improv-belly-dancing-meditation space that contains many contradictions. The schedule of performances is regular and robust but the cash donations are erratic. It’s called BloomBars, in the plural, though the place is singular, and it also isn’t a bar, because Chambers maintains a no-alcohol policy. He thinks it takes performers and patrons off their game.
Dubsie has gotten her groove on and has figured out how to work the shaker herself, mostly, and as Baba Ras sings “One Love” she busts out her favorite dance move, which is turning ’round and ’round slowly on her short little legs.
Harambee is only half an hour long and it’s over before you know it. Baba Ras concludes by saying, as he usually does, that he’s grateful he has the chance to bring music to the children and to bring the people together, and this time he adds he is thankful for the positivity of this place, which is a break from the sadness of the world, and he says that that helps because lost a dear friend this week, and a shadow crosses his sweaty face. I find myself wondering what life is like for Baba Ras D when the children are gone and he lies like Bob Marley in a single bed.
Chambers takes the stage and thanks everyone for coming and reminds everyone to vote for BloomBars for Best Arts and Culture Non-Profit in the City Paper’s Best of D.C. competition, which BloomBars has won several years running. Please vote, Chambers pleads to the buzzing room, because the place runs on donations and needs all the help it can get.
The parents struggle off the floor and families begin a humid, slow-motion exit of boots and jacket sleeves and good-byes and Emma, where are your gloves. I’d hoped to hang out with a couple I know, but their daughter has fallen on a tambourine and has a couple of jingle-sized scrapes on her cheek and is crying.
Outside, while no one was paying attention, it has started snowing, and the parking lot of baby joggers are carpeted in white.
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