There’s a story about why brides carry flowers, a culture carried on from the tribes of Europe, I believe, and transferred to us through the collision of cultures. The story goes that the scarcity of water caused the poor to go many days without washing, and that a bride’s flowers were to mask the whiff of unscaled sweats. Perhaps.
I just know it’s one of those things I did that was completely meaningless to me. It was also because my friends had been appalled by my idea to carry a drum down the aisle. I don’t know why their eyes popped with horror. And I had explained clearly that I was going to beat that drum.
They refused. Weddings are for the people who hold you together, the ones who stand by you, the ones who mold you into becoming and give your life meaning. The bride attends that ceremony as a symbol of those connections.
If you thought for one moment that my drum was silenced, then you don’t know me. I told Mzee Ngwa, a Cameroonian drum intercessor, that I needed him to usher in my ancestors. He said- Say no more, sister.
As I stood at the doorway to the sanctuary, he beat that drum once, and everything went completely silent. It shook the walls. Heads turned. He started marching down that aisle, beating that drum until my people came from beyond, stood right there next to me, unseen, and said- Child, we’re here. I cried. I did.
Mzee Ngwa arrived at the Christian altar of that sanctuary, a church that fed the homeless and gathered the weary, and he knelt there, cradled his drum, and ripped the air with pulse and pound and sounds from time before time.
Soon after the African drum at the altar quieted, my celloist friend took to his instrument and mellowed out the fierce space. The cello was no frivolous choice.
It was the sound of a different culture’s call to primordial spaces within. Bach, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, have often accompanied the moments of my life when I needed the noise inside quieted down.
Somewhere at the church’s audio controls, a button was pressed, the Cello went quiet, and Elizabeth Wither’s Simple Things came through the sanctuary speakers, crisp and true…
…the other day, I received a notification from Yahoo Mail that my storage was full. I got to deleting old emails with attachments and I came across this one with the subject “Let’s dance again”.
It was from Preston from 19 years ago. He was following up after a first date he’d taken me on – a ball, black tie and all, where we had danced to James Ingram’s One in a Million. Preston’s email had a song attached – Wither’s Simple Things. I loved it. It’s the song that came on after the cello. “Simple things” became our go-to theme in life.
That song was also a gateway to a world of sounds that sailed me through life with great urgency. My husband’s choice of music brought me the gift of expanded identity, the opportunity to sink my feet in black loam soils of soul and surrender-
Papa was a rolling stone, wherever he lay his hat was his home… Picket lines, and picket signs, don’t punish me with brutality… You might say, that all I do, is dream my life away, ’cause I’m stone in love with you… Amazing grace, how sweet that sound… no, no, you have to hear Aretha Franklyn’s version, and do the get-up and stomp and break free.
One grows. One resurrects from crucifixions of slain blackness, not the color as imposed code, but as root. From whence we come.
On that day, the forest of sounds rivaled the lifeforms of the the Okavango in full season. My people’s clapping and ullulating to Swahili songs and Taita folk tunes got the audience up and breaking free.
Friends I hold dear, my brothers from Jabali Afrika belted out 100 parrr-a-cent. A priceless gift of presence and partaking. A student of mine did a black spiritual and made our breath catch.
The DC Labor Chorus stood with us and sang Somos el Barco. Somewhere at the end, we also sang Hold the Fort– for we are coming, union folks be strong, ide by side we battle onward, victory will come.
A union song made it to the wedding. Fist pumps and everything. And we sang it all at the altar. Yup.
Our boat carried eee’rybody.
It has carried many many sounds and crossed boundaries that respected no claims of anyone’s superiority. We sail this boat with whoever receives us as friend. We draw the line where you refuse to sing along.
It’s been one incredible voyage with you, my love, and our sails still catch the winds just right.
Somos el barco, somos el mar…
We are the boat, we are the sea,
I sail in you, you sail in me…
And the boat that we are sailing in
Was built by many hands
And the sea that we are sailing on,
It touches every sand
