MLK Celebration To Be Held Virtually, Mashpee Native Will Headline
No Place For Hate Falmouth’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast will be held virtually this year on January 17 at 10 AM.
Mashpee native and singer/songwriter Naomi Westwater will headline the event, presenting “A Musical Tribute to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King” featuring the songs that inspired Dr. King himself. Additionally, Ms. Westwater will sing some of her own songs including “Americana,” a song that addresses her own experience as a person of color.
“A big part of what I write about is being a black multiracial woman in America and in New England,” Ms. Westwater said. “There are aspects of thinking about race that are always part of my writing.”
Ms. Westwater, who now lives in Brockton, said that she is specifically inspired by Dr. King’s Christmas Sermon on Peace, which she reads multiple times each year. She said she draws inspiration from his globalized philosophy of interconnectedness, that all people are woven together.
“There [was] real pain in his life, in what he experienced and how he died, but there’s also so much joy and really incredible creativity in his writing and his speeches,” she said.
Ms. Westwater is a musician and songwriter whose work often employs spirituality and music with other artistic ventures like painting, poetry, and creative writing. She holds a Master of Music in Contemporary Performance and Production from Berklee College of Music and is a 2019 Berklee College of Music Post Master’s Graduate Fellow. She was nominated for a 2021 Boston Music Award for best singer-songwriter and has accumulated various other artistic and academic accolades: she was a 2020 617Sessions Artist, the recipient of the 2020 Boston Opportunity Fund and the 2019 Iguana Music Fund grants.
A big part of Ms. Westwater’s identity is celebrating the joy of being Black, something she said she wants to bring to this performance and communicate to the audience.
“It can become very easy, in the wake of the past few years through the pandemic and with the Black Lives Matter movement, for being Black to feel like a burden,” Ms. Westwater said. “There is a heaviness to this holiday, but there also is a lot of celebration. I’m hoping to honor and balance those aspects: that it is a celebration of his life and what he accomplished, and it’s a celebration of Black leadership, the amazing things that Black people can do, and the legacy of that.”
Ms. Westwater says she’s looking forward to being able to perform at Waquoit Congregational Church, which is where the performance will be recorded and streamed from.
“I think it will be special to be in the church just because of MLK’s legacy,” she said. “I’m excited to sing in the church because it just amplifies the vocals in a way that is always majestic.”
The virtual breakfast will also include the presentation of No Place For Hate Falmouth’s Civic Leadership Award. This year’s recipient is Sandra Faiman-Silva of Falmouth, an activist who was also recently awarded a human rights champion award from the Barnstable County Human Rights Commission.
“The steering committee of No Place For Hate Falmouth is delighted that Dr. Faiman-Silva has agreed to be honored by us,” said Rabbi Elias Lieberman, steering committee member. “As the recent granting of an award from the Barnstable County Human Rights Commission shows, Dr. Faiman-Silva has very much been the conscience of our community for decades. We’re grateful for the pioneering work which led, in large measure, to the creation of No Place For Hate Falmouth, as well as the many ways in which she has championed important causes and moved our town forward in important ways.”
“She’s such an important part of this community,” said Pamela Rothstein, also a steering committee member. “It is just an accumulation of [her] amazing lifetime of advocacy and civic work to bring justice to everybody.”
The breakfast is held annually in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and is well attended every year, Ms. Rothstein said, and is a pillar of No Place For Hate Falmouth’s yearly programming.
“It’s just great when so many members of the community are gathered in one place,” Ms. Rothstein said. “It just speaks to the vitality of Falmouth as a community.”
The event is available real-time on both Zoom and FCTV, and is free and open to everyone. Pre-registration for the Zoom meeting is open now and can be found online at www.npfhfalmouth.org/.