It was a very relaxed atmosphere that afternoon, with sunshiny picture-perfect weather outside. Everyone was so warm and helpful. I was having so much fun. I looked over the books in The Library. I looked at the portraits of the first ladies in The Vermeil Room long enough to decide that Nancy Reagan's was my favorite one. I studied the art in The Green Room. I even stood at the front entrance of The White House and called my grandmother. As the guests began to arrive, we went back to the third floor. I put on a basic beat, pressed my outfit and drifted back and forth in between the dressing rooms until time forced me to put on my dress.

With an assortment of videos and cable TV, the guys had the best set up, even if they had the smaller room. My father was in there, chatting with Stanley Crouch and Zane and the rest of the musicians. Mr. Crouch was there to give the opening remarks. During soundcheck, we had an interesting conversation about James "Blood" Ulmer, Ornette Coleman, and harmelodics and jazz in general. I had been thinking about Blood a lot lately. I was wishing he could see the performance. I wanted everyone to see it. Little did I know that my Uncle Jackie would see it in real time on C-Span while in Honolulu on business, call his wife, my Aunt Mattie, and start a chain reaction through my family that took off like a house on fire. Ah, the power of modern technology. Everyone was there after all. Everyone in the world.

We were led to The Blue Room to await our entrances. Our stage managers Janice and Gwen were with us, of course. We whispered. We took pictures. We laughed and held hands. We looked so elegant. We were so happy. We heard the President and First Lady announced to the room, just like on television. This television moment gradually erupted into an avalanche of many that would occur throughout the rest of the evening, moments that stacked themselves on top of protocol to create a kind of uberreality, one that blurred the lines between the veracity of my perceptions and the reality of my surroundings. As I heard the strains of Ellington's "Come Sunday," I peeked from the doorway of The Blue Room like a child, and watched as the melody reached out to me over a sea of people, forlorn and unafraid. As we began our section of the program, I stood at the doorway as others passed me and performed with élan, all of them moving gracefully through each transition with a flow that was effortless and sublime.

And then it was my turn.

As the song "Dream Deferred" began, I stepped out of The Blue Room in my blue dress. A hush fell upon the audience. Buoyed by the incessant clicking of cameras and the popping of flashbulbs, I floated upon the golden luster that oozed from everywhere in the room as I slowly made my way towards Charles, who waited patiently for me at the edge of the stage. His hand was extended towards me, like a scepter. It was all I could see. That's when I had an epiphany: I never seriously considered doing some subversive thing at this function but I realized that because of Langston Hughes' poem "Dream Deferred" was so revolutionary, my performance would be seditious enough.

As I stepped onto the stage and saw so many faces of strangers that I recognized, I thought about a conversation I'd had earlier with a man who was a part of the housekeeping staff. He was from a small town in Alabama and had worked at The White House for more than 30 years. He'd overheard me talking to the uninformed aide about Benjamin Banneker in The Entrance Hall. When I came back into The East Room, he motioned to me and took me aside. He led me into The Green Room and pointed to a landscape painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner called "Sand Dunes at Sunset: Atlantic City." Of the hundreds of paintings in The White House collection, it was the first one and the only one by an African-American. It had only been there since (surprise, surprise)1996. He told me that it was there because a visitor asked why there wasn't any artwork by African Americans. Keep the questions coming, he intoned. Funny thing. "Dream Deferred" is practically nothing but questions. As fate would have it, I was posing those questions to the very people that needed to hear them.

As I stood onstage, moments before I was to sing, I had another epiphany: I had the President's full attention. Not just the President, either, but several members of his Cabinet. Was I the most powerful person in the world, if only for an instant? Maybe.

Of course, the evening was a success. Once the program was over, everything was a blur, but there are moments that I'll never forget: taking a picture with The President and First Lady; having The President tell me that he knew that I was from the South because he could sense it in my presence; listening to him tell my father that he had a lot to be proud of in me as a daughter (and hearing my father agree); Ken Burns telling me that I rearranged his molecules when he heard my voice; meeting The Funk Brothers, especially talking to Bob Babbitt and Jack Ashford.

The bottom line for me was that I was honored to be asked to go, I was relieved that I was doing material that represented who I was and I was grateful to God that my father could come with me.