For Black Music Month
My house sat on the same piece of land as my grandparents’ house and my aunt’s house. Our houses were built by my great-grandfather and when I moved in at age 6, my house was already over 100 years old. I come from a musical family. As far as I know, my daughters are fifth generation musicians. We all started out on the piano, but wound up picking our favorite instruments to play for a few years; some of us into adulthood.
As a child, I loved the weekends especially, because there was Soul Train after cartoons. Sometimes I sat still long enough to watch some American Bandstand. But, my normal practice was to walk over to my grandparents’ house to watch Dance Fever and after that, Minnie Pearl would be on TV telling jokes, while wearing her floral straw hat with the price tag hanging down. That always made me laugh! But, the final music/variety show to watch in the early afternoons was Hee Haw. So that you have it straight, on Saturdays, I was exposed to R&B, Pop, Rock, Disco, and Country music. Because my family played for and/or sang in church choirs, I got Gospel music on Sundays. Music was my life and still is!
Most recently, there have been some controversies over who can make or should be making what kind of music. In a family where the belief that Gospel, the Blues, and Country were kissing cousins, it never mattered what the artist looked like. It mattered what the artist sounded like. Lord, PLEASE don’t be off key around my grandmother! She would strike that piano key harder and harder until you sounded right: not too sharp or too flat.
It is my belief that real musicians know that music is a gift that you give away or share with others. This is not about copyrights. This is about how a song makes you feel. Does it make your body move or does it move you to tears? Apart from that, I love to look at how music transcends time and place. I remember one of my cousins who when I would visit her in college, she would play her African instruments for me and share her love of the banjo. Imagine my surprise in finding out that the instrument that Roy Clark played came from Africa! This instrument has helped to shape not just Country, but also Bluegrass music. It came across the oceans and flourished here in the States. Other instruments have done the same thing, crisscrossing the globe and contributing to music genres loved everywhere. But with the banjo, to me, this made country Black music. You want to dig in a music crate right quick? Go listen to Lionel Richie and Alabama sing “Deep River Woman”. Chile…
Music is art. It has strength and beauty. It is soft, yet resilient. It is evergreen and ever-changing! In this respect, it reminds me of people. Over time, we, too, change. We grow up and sometimes out and away. Sometimes, the change is due to just wanting something different. Visiting a place where you can feel the heartbeat of the city or hear the whisper of a valley, makes you want to feel that vibration or listen to that quiet and constant sound for the rest of your life. In other instances, there are traumas that sometimes force the change, like when plants propagate or are pruned. The main branch stays strong and the newer branch grows in a different direction.
A former boss of mine once told me that change is good when progress is its motivation. Black music may have started in Africa, but the diaspora has influenced many other forms of music worldwide. You will hear jazz, blues, country, gospel, hip-hop, etc. and you will know love. You feel our rhythms and sing our tunes and know that it is eternal. Black music has survived change and so has our people. This moment is about lineage and resilience and resistance and change and growth… and how it won’t be denied and will live.
Phoebe and The Voices Story
Phoebe had been ready to spend the night at her grandparents’ house since the middle of the week. Her grandparents were the best! It wasn’t just because she would sit up on Fridays and watch late night comedies with her grandpa, while eating stacks of cereal with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It wasn’t just because her grandma made pancakes on Saturday mornings, either. It was because when she started to get sleepy, they would turn their attention to Phoebe and tell her bedtime stories. Their stories didn’t come from a book that her grandma selected or one that her grandpa used to teach in school. They were stories that her grandparents told her that they heard from their grandparents, AND they would sit and tell them to her together!
Sometimes hilarity would ensue when her grandpa would say something totally outrageous and her grandma would laugh like there was no tomorrow! Other times, the stories were so full of wonder that she would dream vivid dreams and would swear that she had been to another place altogether different than home. But tonight, Grandma and Grandpa decided to tell Phoebe about “The Voices”.
While sitting on either side of Phoebe, her grandparents told different sides of the tale. “The Voices” was about how in many communities in Africa (well before slavery, when people were stolen and the grief and longing for home was so bad, they stopped talking and singing), your voice could make things happen. Folks had to be careful about what they said and sang, especially. Words were life, but songs could either bring forth a crop or tear down a mountain!
Grandma talked about how young girls would sing and the animals would follow them around. Grandpa talked about how young men would sing and make young women follow them around. Grandma would then frown up at him and he would say, “What?? Don’t you like Jodeci?!?!” And, Grandma would giggle like a schoolgirl.
When Phoebe asked about what would happen if you couldn’t sing, Grandpa said that didn’t matter. If you had a voice, it was put to use. Let’s say you couldn’t carry a tune. So what? You could belt out a tune that would uproot a tree that needed to be moved anyway. Or, you could stand at the mouth of a wild river and sing a chord loud enough to make the fish die and float up to catch for dinner. The women sang together to help a mother in labor bring forth her unborn child. The men sang together to bring forth rain with thunder and lightning to end droughts. The community thrived around the voices, and their songs together brought harmony in music and family. The voices helped people grow into understanding that your voice was valuable and magical and necessary.
Phoebe asked one last question, because she was getting sleepy and with this newfound knowledge of voices, she had wondered, at least once, if her grandparents were using their voices to put her to sleep. She asked them what if you were a bad person, what did you do with your voice. Grandma told her not to worry about that either. Every voice has a purpose. Sometimes people want something different, not necessarily good or bad. Grandma said her mama used to say that everything ain’t for everybody. When someone wanted to sing something that wasn’t like the songs they heard within their families or communities, they were still accepted and they were still loved. What happened is that when they were old enough to take care of themselves and if they still wanted to sing their own songs, they were pointed in the direction of a community that sang songs like their own or were shown the way to a clearing where they could make their own home and maybe it would become a new community.
Grandpa explained that strong parents make strong children, and oftentimes strong children have strong wills. You don’t destroy what you love. You understand that sometimes your child will think differently and that they have to find their way in the world. If your child chooses to work in love and light, the ground will yield fruit that can help them and others grow strong. When bad comes in, the soil turns bad and can’t grow anything for themselves or others to eat. The child will either come back home to rejoin the community or find one that is like his own mind, one that can help him use his voice for the good of the community.
Grandma explained, while tucking the blanket under Phoebe’s chin that they were right back to good even when sometimes folks want to be different. Use your voice for good always. This way, when you leave home, you take home with you and you do good where you end up. Your song may no longer sound like what you used to sing, but it grows strong in something new. Grandpa added that the old songs will keep being sung, but now The Voices are everywhere. That seemed to satisfy Phoebe, who turned over, went to sleep, and dreamed of a choir.
