Afro Blue: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

“Afro Blue“ is a jazz standard written by Mongo Santamaria in 1959, with a lyric added later by Oscar Brown Jr. It’s been performed countless times, by everyone from John Coltrane to Robert Glasper and Erykah Badu. The beautifully understated words include the phrases “undulating grace,“ “elegant boy,“ “beautiful girl,“ “shades of delight“ and “cocoa hue.“ Afro Blue, a nine-member a cappella troupe from Howard University in Washington, D.C., is all that and more. Its members sing as one with nuance, ease and experience, as if they’ve been singing together for years. But they haven’t: The ensemble is ever-changing, as students graduate and new members audition for a coveted spot in the lineup. Professor Connaitre Miller formed the vocal jazz ensemble in 2002. Afro Blue recently reached the final four on NBC’s The Sing-Off, and it routinely performs at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. It played at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem with Dianne Reeves, and just recently was invi