In the fall semester of the 1977 academic year at Boston College, a small group of black students, feeling the need to be closely connected in their new academic environment, congregated to encourage and support one another by singing the songs of their religious tradition and to give praise to almighty God. The students chose the name Imani, the Swahili word for faith, as the name for their group. In choosing the name Imani for their group, the students were recalling the lyrics of one of the great hymns of the black religious experience: "we've come this far by faith, leaning on the Lord, trusting in His holy word, He's never failed us yet." The repertoire of the group is reflective of this great faith tradition in that it includes the breadth of musical expression in the black worship experience, i.e., spirituals, traditional gospel, contemporary gospel, as well as music of the European tradition.
In the fall of 1982, Prof. Hubert E. Walters was appointed as lecturer in African & African Diaspora Studies and Music at Boston College, and was asked to be the musical director for the Voices of Imani. Voices of Imani is a student-based organization that is connected to the African & African Diaspora Studies Program as a laboratory for the courses taught by Prof. Walters. Membership in the organization is open to the entire student population at the college and the group is quite diverse in it make-up. For the past several years the group has toured various parts of the country during the spring break period. In recent years they have visited Tennessee, Florida, Texas, California, Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, Georgia this past March.
Read more about Prof. Walters and Voices of Imani in this article from the Boston College Chronicle.
About the Musical Director: Prof. Hubert E. Walters is a graduate of North Carolina Central University, East Carolina University, and has done graduate study at the School for the Arts at Boston University. He recently retired as professor of music at U-Mass Boston. He has taught music at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C. and was a charter member of the Afro-American Studies Department at Harvard. He has been musical director of the Voices of Imani since 1982. Last year, Prof. Walters was unanimously selected to receive the Arts Council Award for outstanding contributions to the Arts at Boston College.
About the Assistant Musical Director: Mr. Elan Trottman is a graduate of the Berklee School of Music in Boston. He teaches music in the Boston Public Schools and has served as Minister of Music at a number of churches in the Boston area.