Poet laureate of ESL honors his fellow honorees at the Black World History Museum
By Eugene B. Redmond
Special to the American
Performed at the Second Annual Black World History Museum’s “Griots Gala & Tribunal Honors” Friday, June 10 at the Millennium Hotel in St. Louis.
“My Black mothers I hear them singing.
My Black fathers I hear them chanting.”
– Henry Dumas
Two decades before urban djali-rapper Ice Cube shared his ancestor-inspired admonishment –
You better check yourself before you wreck yourself,
You better check yourself before you wreck yourself –
Amiri Baraka, father of the 1960s Black Arts Movement, whose 40th anniversary we are celebrating in 2005, warned –
Arm Your Self Before You Harm Yourself.
So we be griots, grateful for inclusion in the Grand Black/Human/Design,
natural by nature, who have checked ourselves – amidst the grinding human wreckage & spillage -& armed ourselves like long-distance cultural runners & “long breath singers,” as Clyde Taylor would call us, with knowledge dropped from ancient drumvoices.
Meaning, we be rescuers & reclaimers workin’ God/s-friendly grids known as ancestrails:
Phillip Brown’s “Mural” of Enduring debt to “Kemetic Ancestors”; his self- & communal actualization through that heritage-source called Sankokic Experience;
Gladys Coggswell’s “[Multi] Story Woman,” her elderific faith “map for the journey to Wisdom, Perseverance, & Pride” that helped title her a Missouri Master Folk Artist & led her to China to tell stories tall as the Great Wall;
Melvina Conley’s “Sheroism” in the preservation of African-American archives, especially the FlagShip/SoulShip Collections of Dred & Harriet Scott & Elizabeth Keckley;
Etta Daniels’ “Friends of Greenwood Cemetery,” her meals-making for the homeless & sheltering of battered women – AKA soror to the sorrowful;
Frankie Muse Freeman’s half century plus of activism, culturally purposeful jurisprudence, inumerable “firsts,” like LBJ’s First Woman Appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, her “Links” to NAACP & Urban League;
“Mama” Lisa Gage’s persona as a sun ray-raising “heat, passion, & life-birthing energy” through dance, drumming & poetry, shuttling ritual lasers of love among Ghana, Togo, Jamaica, Haiti, & the ‘hood;
Jamie Graham’s tutorials under activist-scholar-giant W.E.B. DuBois, her “Lift” & “Sing” credo that invokes the historical watch of James Weldon Johnson; her vaunted “vault” of cultures, i.e. urban bibliographies;
Julius Hunter’s precedent-setting chats with five incumbent presidents & main-man-anchor-man in the relay of culture & information, from Down- & Up-South cuisinarts & vernaculars to Pope parades & newscapades;
Terry Kennedy’s “Kujaliwa”-stance, via Vashon & Howard University, mixing the Rites de Passage of the totemic & aldermanic, South African Boot Dance & Kwanzaa; bold young Oba blasting outta the past;
Robert Ray’s magical musical wand of “Gospel Magnificat,” conducting his baton of balm to hungry ears of Asia, Europe, South Africa, South America & Carnegie Hall, where “Gospel Mass” gave Homage to William Grant Still;
Jamala Rogers’s descent, like Egyptian She-King Hatshepsut, into the DMZ of abuse & ignorance, dropping knowledge & raising cadres of youth born again in the Image of them(ancestral)selves; black radical congresswoman & columnist for columns of voiceless.
We be repositories/cultural servants/war-poised & prayerful in un/furl of the Black World History Museum’s whirl called Griots Gala & Tribunal Honors, humbly accepting your salutes in this luminous garden of grace while keeping one eye on the battlefield to which we shall return like flames that burn full – & UP!
Asante Sana!
Merci!
Gracias Ore Mi!
Selah!
Amen!
Asalaam Alaikum!
Ayibobo!