Deep River of Song Within the Story

Sounds of congregation from Damballah by John Edgar Wideman …

I wanted to dwell on Sybela's first free morning but the chant of the Gospel Chorus wouldn't let me sit still. Lord, reach down and touch me. The chorus wailing and then Reba Love Jackson soloing. I heard May singing and heard Mother Bess telling what she remembers and what she had heard about Sybela Owens. I was thinking the way Aunt May talks. I heard her laughter, her amens, and can I get a witness, her digressions within digressions, the webs she spins and brushes away with her hands. Her stories exist because of their parts and each part is a story worth telling, worth examining to find the stories it contains. What seems to ramble begins to cohere when the listener understands the process, understands that the voice seeks to recover everything, that the voice proclaims nothing is lost, that the listener is not passive but lives like everything else within the story. Somebody shouts Tell the truth. You shout too. May is preaching and dances out between the shiny, butt-rubbed, wooden pews doing what she's been doing since the first morning somebody said Freedom. Freedom.

Improvisation within convention is what the alert listener is on the lookout for whether or not they have sat in butt-rubbed pews.

And so for day 1913
09.03.2012

Mumbo Jumbo

I unfolded what looked like a topographic map of Pikwakwud Creek in the Kenora District (Patricia Portion) of Ontario to find on the obverse a poster for Mumbo Jumbo Voodoo Combo appearing at the Silver Dollar at 1 A.M. "Tonight". The poster advertises "Cajun-inflected psycho Blues that can make the dead get up and dance!" and on internal evidence (the quotations from newspapers all date from '92 to '94) I would venture to peg the event of the group's appearance at the Silver Dollar (a venue located in Toronto) to the mid 90s. And a bit of searching tells the story of their longevity. See http://www.mumbojumbo.ca/ where they proudly boast of "Celebrating 20 years of HooDoo".

I'm sure the poster got folded up among my files because I was at the time interested in magic and Black American writing. Of course, my shelves contained Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo. They also housed Mama Day by Gloria Naylor and the rich tapestry of Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo by ntozake shange. And the criticism of Houston A. Baker Jr. Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing. The books still reside in my library and I can thank some wise recycler of maps for finding my way back to a universe of historical and theoretical lore arising out of lived experience, resilience and a quest for the future.

Time to check out the video store to see if they have a copy of Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust which I want to see again and which is now I learn also a novel.

And so for day 780
31.01.2009