This is not an obituary.
Paul Carter Harrison, award-winning playwright, scholar, professor, mentor, loving father, husband, and loyal friend, was far too invested in and connected to the lifeforce in him for anything of the sort. This is a Praise Song for a Newly Minted Ancestor.
Paul Carter Harrison was the quintessential “race man” who spent his entire career dedicated to the task of reconnecting us to the root.
Paul Carter Harrison was the quintessential “race man” who spent his entire career dedicated to the task of reconnecting us to the root. Much like the Egungun in the Yoruba tradition, he acted as a luminous bridge between Then and Now. (“Egungun is a visible manifestation of the spirits of departed ancestors who periodically revisit the human community for remembrance, celebration, and blessings.”) For him, we were not lost and wondering but truly connected to a deep rich legacy of art and culture that could serve as a wellspring from which we could drink and evolve.
The first time I remember meeting PCH, I must have been about eight years old. He’d come to visit my mother Olivia, who was a longtime friend from college days at Indiana University. I was immediately struck by the way he seemed to glide into the room donning a dashiki and man-bag. When he spoke, I sat mesmerized and wondered where he’d come from. I found him sort of magical and scary at the same time. When my mother took me to see his play The Great MacDaddy at the Negro Ensemble Company, I didn’t quite understand it. Yet that sense of something magical I’d seen in him as a child was also in the play. I was inspired. Paul would become a kind of surrogate father to me as I grew up. His interventions were especially important to me since I would go against mom’s wishes and pursue the art of making theater as a career. He encouraged me and supported me throughout. Eventually, I would get to work with him as a dramaturge which was the ultimate gift of a long-cherished family friend and mentor.
Despite his formidable presence in any room, he inhabited much of his real work and undeniable influence on Black art, and art makers remained in the shadows. PCH was deeply involved in the Black Arts Movement and the establishing of Black Theatre aesthetics. He collaborated and/or maintained close association with many of the luminaries of his time including Amiri Baraka, Melvin van Peebles, Oliver Jackson, Max Roach, Archie Shepp, Ntozake Shange, Dianne McIntyre, August Wilson and countless others who were influenced by his writing, lectures, and creative work. In many ways, his work was far ahead of its time. In years to come, as is sadly the case when brilliant artist-scholars make their transition, many will “discover” him and marvel.
He was eager to get back to work on a co-edited volume of essays on the “real roots of Afro-Futurism, not that commercial stuff they have going out there,” he said.
“Drama of Nommo: Black Theatre in the African-Continuum”, his first book of essays articulating black aesthetics, brought us an alternative weapon with which to ‘fight the power.’ Nommo invoked the power to use language to call forth a new reality. The power of ritual and language to transform reality is essential to our liberation as people of the diaspora. In his seminal essay Mother/Word, he writes:
“Close inspection of language in the African diaspora-save, perhaps, the hybrid form of nineteenth-century European speech retained in Liberia-reveals the common verbal impulse to make the word sing, irrespective of alien-tongue or corruptions of original syntax. What is most important here, as much so as for the Dogon, is that the resulting actions of language-spoken or gesticulated have meaningful correspondences in both the physical and spiritual worlds. It is not uncommon, then, to discover in the art forms of the black world a language that is mythopoetic and intensified or amplified by an orphic sonority. A scat song, for example, is a rhythmic elaboration of language that, much like “talkin’ in tongues,” probes the “numinous shadow ” for light and the meaning of objective reality, and produces, as Wilson Harris has noted in The Womb of Space, 5 “metaphoric imagery that intricately conveys music as the shadow of vanished but visualized presences.”
Yes!
Though we all took great pride in that PCH was a man of arts and letters to many of us, he was much more. His commitment and loyalty to family were unflinching and profound. His only biological daughter, Fonteyn, described him as a “great father!” And that he was for sure. But he was also a great uncle, grandfather, mentor, friend, husband and champion of our right to think and live freely. His definition of family was broad and included many of us younger artists-scholars who dared to explore our identities beyond the bounds of established definitions of black art and culture. He studied diligently so that we could know from whence we came.
I spoke to him two days before he made his transition. As always, he was eager to get back to work on a co-edited volume of essays on the “real roots of Afro-Futurism, not that commercial stuff they have going out there,” he said. “I know Paul… I hear you.” In so many ways, PCH played the role of ancestor to his people in real time throughout his embodied life. He could be a harsh critic at times, but beneath it all, you knew that he cared and that he loved you regardless. It was that Ogun/Shango/Elegba kind of love that understood the urgency of the task and wanted us to know that artistic production was important. He was a seasoned warrior and a trickster when it suited the circumstances. Wanda Malone Harrison, his wife and Fonteyn knew the fullness of his passion. He was a complicated man who would come to be revered the way he should have been in life now that he’s gone home.
We are blessed to have you with us through the work, of course. But those of us who knew you well will miss you dearly, even though we can rest assured that you are with us nonetheless. Ase’!!!
Kym Moore is Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University and Co-Artistic Director of Antigravity Performance Project.