i actually went in search of a gospel station on live365.com this morning. ha!
a few months ago, someone on myspace mentioned the caravan to the ancestors in galveston, texas. apparently there were some christian songs sung during the procession, and one of the organizers said something like, "before all you ultra-orisha people get upset, you know your grandmother prayed for you at so & so baptist church..."
at just about every ancestor event i've been to, i've heard at least one spiritual sung, often at the urging of the egungun themselves.
remember: those before us coded the language of western scripture and used it to their advantage. it took generations' worth of removal from africa before they fully bought in to the white man's faith, forgetting the symbols and signs.
before that, spirituals were musical morse code, and the bible--for many--was an odu of liberation.
just a thought.
y'all be cool.
2 comments:
But how to get back to understanding these as resistance code rather than as the word of a white god that hates us when we are ourselves? I get what you're saying, though.
i think that the key now is understanding that we don't NEED the code. not really. we have access to the roots again; we can read for ourselves, we can contact and exchange thoughts and ideas with continental africans who are still versed in the traditions, etc.
we don't have to hide the drums and play in the middle of the night behind the slave quarters (altho i did attend a voudon event that was subdued by a white police officer...you should have seen his face. HA!).
the (christian) code is almost of no use now anyway. no one seems to remember or care that it was all a huge metaphor in the first place--even for the whitefolk. now it just looks and feels like a complete PR gimmick.
like most things, it's a process. the struggles and labor pains of a people struggling to reclaim their true selves. but what i'm seeing suggests that we are on the right track.
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