Header Image - The Worlds of Ntozake Shange
The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

Amanda

Reading Zake: The Sacred Never Runs Out

by Amanda 8 Comments

–MUSIC– This is a really long youtube video of David Murray/Black Saint Quartet performing live in Berlin, but the energy shared between the musicians makes it well worth watching.

“There’s no music I hear without sensing you.”

This line is written in a letter Zake addresses to and in memory of her father–later to be used/edited for inclusion in Gloria Wade-Gayles anthology Father Songs. The quote made a circle in my mind that brought me to my first post rewriting Fanon, in which I talked about how laying claim to history and looking to the past as a way of informing one’s future is an important healing practice. This quote brings forth that feeling as truth. It brings forward the feeling that music is an art form capable of being inhabited (by soul/reality/existence/being/life) for healing. & to listen to music//really//listen to the music/ is to open oneself up to the voices & presence of the sacred.

Quiet As It’s Kept: Google/Wiki// Find Articles

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When taking on academic research, I usually start with a quick Google search that often leads me to Wikipedia. Google and Wikipedia serve as great points of departure because they help clarify how I might move about refining a given project’s aim.  Although many of us scholars are conditioned to be skeptical about the reliability, and validity of the information found on sites like Wiki, we use them anyway. Why? Because it’s a starting point? Because it’s free? Because it’s simple.? Because it’s ~usually~ right? If all of this is true, why then are many of our instructors so hell bent on ridding our academic research process of Wikipedia?

For one: anyone can post material on wiki–making it an extremely unreliable source. The uncertain level of expertise used for any given data entry makes the use of wiki inappropriate for academic work. Its for this reason that students/scholars have learned to avoid wiki.

Despite this, their have been those instructors who show indifference to the use of wiki and this indifference seems to be based an understanding of Wiki’s value. Wiki proves most valuable in cases where hyper-specific research (research that is in little-to-no way related to mainstream research/popular culture) needs to be done. In example, I would be more inclined to believe in the validity of a wiki entry on Quantum Turbulence because of the specific nature of the subject matter. The instructors that have encouraged or at least allowed limited use of wiki all recognize that it can be a great starting point for research.

I use wiki all the time as a starting point. Once I’ve gotten a general sense of the subject matter, I move past Google/wiki searches and forward with more refined research. One online tool that I always use at this refined stage of my research process is: Find Articles/Summons–a service that Columbia and other academic institutions subscribe to so that researchers can access newspaper articles, e-books, journal collections, etc. from a plethora of databases (including JSTOR, ProQuest, etc.) on one site.

Archive Find 1: Jazz Poetry

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While visiting Barnard’s Archive this past week, I happened across a jazz poem by a contributor to “Phat Mama”. The poem, entitled me & miles, contributed by Thulani Davis (formerly Barbara Davis) talks about the way Miles Davis’ music influenced the narrator beginning as early as childhood– “when i was a childhood/then and oh yeah now/ me and miles/ had a/ real/ thing.”

a blessed place.

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only so much i can do

“only so much i can do” in The Sweet Breath of Life by Ntozake Shange and Kamoinge.

On Monday, the class spoke about some of their favorite pieces from The Sweet Breath of Life by Shange and Kamoinge. One of my favorite image and text pairings from The Sweet Breath of Life (pictured above) depicts a wall—layered by an aged striped wallpaper, pictures of the Lord, a torn out book page covered by a straw hat, and a family photo collage. The title: only so much i can do suggests the narrator finds something on the wall that is in need of fixing and/or attention, but it seems there are only limited approaches to remedying the problem. Considering the suggestive quality of the title, and the reiteration of the fixed thing/circumstance via the wall as physical space and title of the piece, themes of compromise and agency become central.

While the title, only so much i can do, is indicative of the narrator’s limited and/or lack of agency, the text suggest that there is indeed a lot that can be done by the narrator to change the circumstance—the circumstance at hand being the Lord’s gaze erroneously falling in the direction opposite that of the family photos. The narrator’s concern with the Lord’s gaze and re-arrangement of the family photos serves as metaphor for laboring to bring oneself and one’s loved ones into a blessed place/space. It is in that place that we find the extraordinary in the mundane—miracle.

Inter-generational Communion: On Mothering and Friendship

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“I see the street play, the tap dance; I see the double Dutch stuff. It tells a story about how girls pass on skills to girls. You don’t learn double Dutch from your teachers or your parents, but you learn it from your girlfriends. And it’s about that kind of sharing and that trust and that passing along of information and wisdom and ability and excellence.” – Eva Yaa Asantewaa

sassafrass cypress indigo

Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo by Ntozake Shange (1982)

In talking about Camille A. Brown’s Black Girl: Linguistic Play—a show seeking to counter simplistic and overused portrayals of black female experiences in terms of strength and resilience by presenting black female experiences through nuanced understandings of play and protest, friendship and girlhood—Eva Yaa Asantewaa highlights the centrality of sharing to girlhood. I’ve included Brown’s work because it’s bewitchingly honest and glorious, and because I think it helps a great deal to connect mothering, the nature of black girl friendships, and ancestral inheritance—all themes that appear throughout Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo.

Broadly, mothering is about nurturing, guiding, healing and cultivating gifts. While Aunt Haydee’s mothering manifests as teaching Indigo about “giving birth, curing women folks & their loved ones” and also making space for Indigo to play her fiddle, Indigo is seen mothering Aunt Haydee and others through storytelling (“Indigo told Aunt Haydee her own stories” 221), and soothing mothers and children with her fiddle. Not only are these acts reflections of motherhood, they also speak to the nature of friendship. You learn double dutch from your girlfriends. There’s a constant exchange between these women, these girls that ultimately conflates motherhood and friendship in a way that defines inter-generational communion.

“Aunt Haydee pleaded with Blue Sunday to ‘Please, give this child life, please, give this child the freedom you know.’ Then Indigo would play her fiddle, however the woman wanted” (223).

The above quote was extremely restorative and interesting in that although neither of these women//these girls are bearers of children; their participation alone in the process of bringing life into the world renders them mothers. Further, having the power to participate in the birth of people of color, and having the access to the history and thus the ability to call on ancestors for help is a gift. This moment where members of different generations (Blue Sunday, Aunt Haydee, Indigo, and the new child) come together becomes a recipe for ancestral inheritance. One that can look like playing double dutch, gaining the ability to move the sea, healing folks and their loved ones, and hands holding onto voices of slaves singing out of walls.

“The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness. Now they sang out from the walls, pulling Indigo toward them. Indigo ran her hands along the walls, to get the song, getta hold to the voices” (49).

 

Black Girl: Linguistic Play (Photo by Christoper Duggan)

Black Girl: Linguistic Play (Photo by Christoper Duggan). Found on camilleabrown.org

“Her Sisters Cooked & She Made Spells”: Reflections on meeting Shange

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I am really grateful for having the opportunity to meet Shange in such an intimate setting. I think the most stimulating of many pleasant moments were hearing Shange talk about the thoughts and stories behind the creation of some of her major works, realizing she literally lives a choreopoem, and getting to speak to her about i live in music.

I titled this post after the words Shange used to encapsulate her novel Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo. The simplicity of her synopsis lends to the idea that explication isn’t always necessary—a point that I think is central to Shange’s work. Although the statement is simple and accessible, it also proves complex and in need of dissection. Cooking and making spells are two sides of the same creative coin. While her sisters cook, Indigo makes spells—collectively their crafts render them creators, historians, and even personal archivists.

In thinking of the class’ discussion on the significance of women of color telling and recording their own stories, I am inclined to consider the way Shange communicated throughout the class meeting. While speaking, Shange often tapped her foot on the floor to a rhythm that was in conversation with the swaying of her arms. At some point, I realized that I was listening out for these taps. Not merely out of curiosity, but rather out of necessity. Her stomping music and dancing arms served as means for me to grasp her thoughts, completely. They functioned as beginning, ending, and accent of her ideas. Her life truly is choreopoem in practice.

At the dinner’s conclusion I spoke with Shange about her poem, i live in music and asked about the motivation behind it. Not only did Shange recount that the poem’s creation was an improvisational act—the result of having a band cancel their performance last minute during a radio show she was hosting (?)—she also explained that the line “I got 15 trumpets where other women got hips”—a line that I had to inquire about because of its particular importance to me—came out of the genuine and literal desire to have 15 trumpets playing during her show. The line also spoke to the functionality of horns, like trumpets, as tools for heralding things and people of great importance. Furthering this idea, Shange spoke to the horn and trumpet being analogy to women as heralds of the miraculous—the creation of art and life, for example.

 

This is a short playlist of some of the songs that got me over hurdles while writing this post. Hope you enjoy!

They Reminisce Over You: Remembering to Heal & Remembering to Prompt Action

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“It is not enough to reunite with the people in a past where they no longer exist. We must rather reunite with them in their recent counter move which will suddenly call everything into question; we must focus on that zone of hidden fluctuation where the people can be found. For let there be no mistake, it is here that their souls are crystallized and their perception and respiration transfigured… When the colonized intellectual writing for his people uses the past he must do so with the intention of opening up the future, of spurring them into action and fostering hope.”

Frantz Fanon The Wretched of the Earth (163- 167).

In On National Culture, Fanon highlights the tendency of the “colonized intellectual” to look to the past “in order to escape the supremacy of white culture,” (155). In highlighting this truth, looking to the past becomes understood as a wanting practice. Fanon suggests a larger amount of energies be spent using the past as an aide in centering the present moment where the people become woke, where they define themselves, where their agency molds the future.

Reading this quote makes me think heavily about Harlem and healing. Why I think of Harlem, always, within landscapes of time— Harlem in the future, Harlem as I know it today, and, especially, Harlem in the past—is a reflection of one of the ways I’ve chosen to “escape the supremacy of white culture,” or, rather, one of the ways I’ve chosen to heal. For this reason, reshaping Fanon’s words to communicate the necessity of remembering the past, finding solace in history was most pressing. However, I wanted to do this in a way that recognized the value of centralizing the current experiences of the people and propelling them into action, as Fanon encourages, while placing emphasis on the relationship between remembering to heal and remembering to incite action.

Spaces are where I hear changes in the voice of the speaker; (double) slashes highlight words and connecting phrases; dashes that engulf words are meant to create a level of erasure.

 

it is –not- enuf/

to -re-unite with the people/

in a past/ where they no longer exist

we/       must -rather re-unite with them

in their recent counter move/

which will suddenly call everything into question/

we must focus on that zone/        of        hidden   fluctuation//

where the people can be found/

for let there be no mistake/

it is here           that their soulz are crystallized       & their perception n respiration transfigurd//

when the colonizd intellectual writin

for his people

uses the past he /must/ do so with the intention of openin up the future/

of spurring them inta action         & fosterin hope.

 

*I listened to a lot of beats while going through this week’s reading and while writing this post. Here are a few.

Edit/Update: A link to a definition of  “woke/stay woke” has been added. I also encourage everyone to listen to Erykah Badu’s Master Teacher and to check out staywoke.us