As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs.
- James Weldon Johnson
Through a stroke of good fortune, I once met the late, great playwright August Wilson years ago in Minnesota while volunteering as an usher in exchange for free tickets to a fund-raising event. Wilson's magic first entered my life via the 1995 screen adaption of The Piano Lesson and later by virtue of the Penumbra Theatre Company in Saint Paul. The scene residually active in my imagination is when Charles Dutton, Carl Gordon, Lou Myers and Courtney B. Vance delivered Berta Berta.
Mesmerized, I researched the Parchman Farm so brilliantly and tragi-comically lamented by Wilson's characters. Results quickly yielded that Brandford Marsalis had also paid tribute to this same forgotten culture in 1992, several years prior to the film.
Everyone should view the aforementioned video to grasp these chains forged for a specific people so long ago but which now shackle all Americans psychologically via the proliferated sociopathy of the race construct.
Meanwhile, the Idiot Box (TV) programs into our skulls more pressing concerns such as Oil Spill 2010 but don't chickens come home to roost in the strangest of ways? Is Black Gold still Texas Tea or A Spoiled Sea? Aren't we all now cooped in the same holding pen, slaving and fighting each other for less but hoping for more?
The slave had many means of resisting the dehumanizing effects of slavery. Religion became one of them. And through religious songs they made up from Biblical stories, they expressed their real feelings.
- Julius Lester
Singing was liquefied religion. We sang because it temporarily freed our spirits from torturous states of involuntary servitude while synchronizing our bodies with the exercise of brutal labor mandated by the framers of this society. We sang to maintain our humanity. We sang to resist. Most importantly, we sang to keep it real and steel our psyches for hell on the horizon.
Don't forget to remember those who were railroaded into building the infrastructure of this nation. From Birmingham, I share a final brief video in tribute to these people, our Pantheon of the Option-less.
Posted by: Zeal
[R Bettis]
3 comments:
Great post! I am intrigued to seek more info about the afore mentioned names and a few songs to sing on a wonderful Holiday (today)
Nevertheless can you elaborate on why you chose to title the post The "Pantheon" of the hope-less. Seems noteworthy...
Thanks! Why not sing "Jesus is Love" by the Commodores? It begins with the simple please, "Father, help your children..." and is so apropos to the mindset of our people who retain the faith.
These people unfairly extracted from life as they knew it were option-less but never hope-less. This is our ongoing historical truth that we often have no viable options but still retain the necessary ingredients for a brighter tomorrow: Faith and Hope (for others, if not ourselves).
I took license and broadly applied the word "Pantheon" to encompass ALL the unknown innocents who have been victimized by those wielding prejudice plus power and is quite appropriate considering our ancestral context. In periods of appreciation, we extend reverence to our ancestors just as the ancients did. We knew they were not God but certain aspects of their personalities reflected characteristics of divinity. From our Christian tradition, Jesus reminded folks, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'?"
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