La conexión a la madre patria While Living (In Music)
In if I can Cook/ you KNow God can, Ntozake Shange makes reference to the experience of Brixton, London. “When the sun comes out in Brixton, a heavily West Indian working-class neighborhood, all kinda miracles comes about. Colors challenging visions… winter’s mists and rains dance up and down… the heat remind[ing] everyone of home (23).” In a later paragraph she describes the music, “our music” that would blast from the vegetable stands. The two artists she mentions are YellowMan and Youssour N’Dour.
In the process of searching for ingredients of a American type dinner, Zake and her daughter, Savannah, are thrusts into the intricacies of the Brixton market. They experience this transcontinental, transcultural refiguring through people, food, and most importantly music.
Hearing Zungguzungguguzungguzeng by King YellowMan, a Jamaican reggae DJ, completes the experience of food shopping at brixton. The simple rhythm is easy to sway to and calls upon the minds of those listening in order to bridge the now and the then.
“Seh if yuh have a paper, yuh must have a pen
And if yuh have a start, yuh must have a end…
Jump fe happiness and jump fe joy
Yuh nuh fe call Yellowman nuh bwoy…
All a dem, dem have yellow children
Some live a Kingston and dung a Maypenn”
When I researched the music of the other artist Shange mentioned, Youssour N’Dour, I was immediately struck by the song Souvenirs.
What’s perfect about the music video of this song is that the singer himself is caught in this continual moment of recollection. He’s present in the land that his body is physically in (the house/ the pool), but his mind is engaged with a distant location. He can’t shake the thoughts of this place and takes the viewer and listeners through the process of reimagining/ revisiting homeland. What I love is that this act is celebratory and demands the right to be historicized (i.e. when the singer captures a selfie with someone from his vision). That selfie breaks international bounds. Later on in the video the protagonist sings as he looks at photo albums, dvds, and other items that remind him of the place he is deeply connected to. This same process is similar to that of Ntozake when she cooks, writes recipes that call to her ancestors, and pulls the knowledge her daughter will inherit closer by exposing her to these foods.
* Date of this post corresponds to my music presentation in class.