My name is Latonya, and I am the cymbal player.

A strange instrument choice, I know! But I have been the cymbal player since 1996, when I joined the Harvard Band. I played my first Commencement, one of our biggest events of the year, in June of 1997. I loved it so much that I came back the next year, and the next year... and suddenly, it became EVERY year, long after my friends and I had graduated.

This year will make year 29. 29 years of friendships, celebrations, good music, and glorious Cambridge.

IF we can get there.

Times are tight. Rent increases, insurance coverage decreases, and general cost of living are making it impossible for my mother and I to get to Commencement this year. With everything else going on in the world, it seems almost selfish to ask for this, and I wouldn't if it weren't important.

But it is so, so important to us.

Of course there's something to be said for "our festival rites," the pomp and pageantry of Commencement. The regalia on display, the excitement of 30,000 people in the air, the stirring speeches, the power of the Band and the Commencement Choir, and the knowledge that we're literally playing a part in one of the most special days in someone's life.

When I joined the Band, I had some musical experience, but not a lot, and to my surprise, that was okay! They put the cymbals in my hands and said, "Just go." And then I came in at the wrong time, but that was okay too. Practice, practice, practice, and suddenly I got it, I could feel that magical groove of the line, and I could make it my own. A few other things happened after that:

All of the above are still true to this day! I'm certainly not ready to join the Boston Symphony, but I'm getting better at the craft every year. My "Bandie friends" are still that, although with the passage of time, they become "my Bandie kids," and we all continue to learn and grow together over Commencement week, forging bonds of music and love that get stronger each year. My mother has become everyone's "Mama," giving us a bigger sense of family and community that can't be matched. And in a world where clangs in discourse get louder and louder, the ring of my cymbals reminds me: I am here, I am alive, I matter, and I am capable of celebration and love. In dark times, that thought is a shining, brassy light to me.

I hope you'll consider helping us find our joy again this year. If you'd like to know and hear more:

An article from the Harvard Gazette in 2019

You can hear the drumline in Commencement 2017