Community Profiles

Jhakeem Haltom

by Elizabeth Bauchner

Last week at the Ithaca Festival, during the Thousands of One show on the Commons, vocalist for the group Jhakeem Haltom spoke about "the myth of race" being designed to keep us separate. "Even though Ithaca is a great community," he said, "I still see a lot of separation."

Race relations are an important issue to Jhakeem, who decries the labels "black" and "white" as the construction of those in power to keep us separate and to make our leaders rich. "Our founding fathers had a vision of world domination," says Haltom. "And our nation needed a separation of people in order to grow wealthy."

Through his music—he writes most of the lyrics for Thousands of One; Joel Blizzard, the drummer, writes some as well—he addresses social inequities with the goal of bringing people together. "The lyrics are a vehicle for dispelling the myth of race," he says, adding that because he's biracial, he grew up with the idea that people are just people—and, in a capitalist sense, we are all enslaved. In a newer song, "Slave Ship Mentality," Jhakeem raps "Slave like the whips that they placed upon our backs/Slave like the hands forcing brothers to sell their crack/Slave like the food we eat giving us heart attacks/Slave like the system makes us sad we take Prozac."

An Ithaca native, Jhakeem, 29, left the area for high school and college. He attended an all African-American boarding school in Mississippi, where music was very competitive and influential, though not in the most positive way. The competitive nature of the school turned Jhakeem off from performing for a while. "I was light-skinned at an all African-American school and was treated like I didn't have the soul for music," Jhakeem explains. Though once he entered college he returned to his musical roots.  

Jhakeem's three biggest influences in music were church, Vitamin L, and his father, Maurice Haltom. His whole life he's attended the First Baptized Church of Jesus Christ in Ithaca. The church is part of the apostolic branch which originated during America's slavery period. The spirituals sung in church were highly influential to Jhakeem as a child—and remain so today. On stage, you can hear the traces of gospel merged with hip-hop.

"I don't push religion on anyone else," Jhakeem says. "For me, it's a guide. My concept of what God is and the images I've seen have been deconstructed so I have a more holistic view—Thousands of One is definitely part of that view."  

As a teenager, he was one of the original members of Vitamin L—a local musical group founded by Jan Nigro and comprised of Nigro and middle and high school students that is still going strong today. The band tours elementary schools around the country bringing a positive message of world peace, hope, and strong character development through upbeat songs.

By far, he says, his biggest influence is his father. "My father taught [West African] drumming to me, and music was always in our house." The elder Haltom is a professional flutist, martial arts teacher, and drummer for a West African dance class. Jhakeem also plays the flute, bringing to Thousands of One yet another genre of musical style that gives the band its unique sound.

In addition to race relations and a desire to see racism end in our community, Jhakeem's music focuses on other local issues like community development and environmental sustainability. He supports the People's Garden Project, whose goal is to create urban organic gardens. They will be hosting a Gospel Block Party August 19 at the Baptized Church. Thousands of One has also performed benefit shows for Food Not Bombs, Books Thru Bars, Ithaca Biodiesel, and Ithaca Community News.

While supporting the community with music is extremely important to Jhakeem and the rest of band, they would like to be able to sustain themselves through music. Jhakeem says they would like to buy some land together and have a community where they can record music and teach classes.

Although certainly talented enough to go on tour—they went on a California and Hawaii tour in February, and they often play various cities around the East Coast—playing in the community remains extremely satisfying to Jhakeem.

"For us, there's no dream of 'making it big' in the music industry in America," Jhakeem explains. "At least not in the traditional sense. As a band, we thought, what better way to use our music than to support community activism?"

You can catch them at both Grassroots and Musefest festivals this summer, or check the tour dates on their web site.

More info: http://www.thousandsofone.com/