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Daaance Coconut Daaance DAAANCE COCONUT DAAANCE WINE YU BATI, LIF UP U CHEST AND POINTE U TUOZ: EMANCIPATING THE BODY FROM MENTAL SLAVERY PART 1 OVERSTANDING IDENTITY MAWNIN (Morning)WHO DECIDES WHO I AM AND HOW I AM TO BE TRAINED “Suffering in search of truth gives true meaning to the truth.” ― Muata Ashby, Ancient Egyptian Proverbs I sit looking through the window at the trees, as they blow softly. I feel my back receiving the wind, slowly rippling, beginning in my spinal column, the sensation manifesting into yanvaloo. I stand at the bus stop watching the Jamaican people labrish, communicating with ‘dem-one-anada’, through loud expressive gestures; I know I am seeing the arms of Kumina, Revival, Rhumba and Chango. I walk, run, stride the mountains and valleys and I feel every muscle in my body changing and being expressive of the voluptuous terrain. The many pumping waterfalls are the Ashanti warriors revolting for freedom, screaming to be remembered. Memory comes through the energies of Buru, Bruckins, Etu, Palo, Comfi and Nyahbingi. I listen as the people scream; scream for home, scream because their children are hungry, they scream an unending scream as they fight to survive, and not merely exist. I come to the realization that because of our rich ancestral heritage, our rivers, oceans, mountains and waterfalls under the hot sun and the bright moonlight, no Caribbean person merely exists. I experience in my body the revolution of Reggae, Daaance’all, Bingi in astafari and the evo/revo explosion of a grounded CARIMOD technique L’Antech. It is believed that the coconut was not planted by any specific set of individuals on each Caribbean island. The fruit is said to have washed ashore having travelled from Africa on the ocean. The coconut brought memories filled with pain, sorrow, life enveloped in drumming and daaancing as a reminder of truth. The husk became a myriad of life tools. Every morsel of the coconut is food and medicine for the Orishas and for mankind. The Orisha, called Papa Legba, also known as (Eshu, Eleggua, Papa Gede, Exu, Anancy, Hapanzi and Nanzi), travelled encased inside the coconut against the harsh ocean currents. In this way, Legba was able to follow the ships on which our traumatized ancestors bled, and from which they were thrown overboard to die. Legba fed the enslaved emotionally, physically, and spiritually, bathed their wounds, washed their Ori, blessed them, and constantly reminded them of their homeland. Papa Legba nurtured the African memories. With this, the coconut became an instrument used for rogation and divination. It took root in each Caribbean island, forever. In Daaance Coconut Daaance, I present a storeroom of data, washed by ancestral memories into the spirit, mind and bodies of those, who against all odds, successfully landed in this so called “New World”. Their bodies transported oceans of cultural data, some of which passed from generation to generation as daaance. In “Jookin’: The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture” by Katrina Hazzard Gordon now Donald, she questions what ‘dancing’ is in the context of ‘dancing the slaves’ which refers to the whipping of slaves. She states that: “They attempted to appropriate dance and reshape it into an instrument of domination…. on board most slave ships the shackled slaves were forced to ‘dance’ after meals (4,5) Thinking similar thoughts and more, I chose, many years ago, to rename the body languages in movement for people of colour as daaance, instead of dance, and as opposed to my other coinage daunce (Eurocentric phonetic pronunciation). Daaance for me is spirit dancing of traditional and, over time, newly formed indigenous creations inspired by those dances which came across the ocean: the traditional, having traveled the oceans and reside in black yaad spaces; daunce on the other hand is a movement dominated by European psychological, social, physical, and emotional constructs. Some of which, due to the middle passage and colonization, have also taken residence in the Caribbean yaad spaces. The difference is, black yaad spaces have been hegemonically dominated into accepting daunce as “high art”, as opposed to the designation of “low art”, which is the labelling for everything black. Designations such as high art, low art, exotic, third world, cult, are denigrating and condescending, to say the least. Hazzard-Donald rightly questions the act of “dancing the slaves”, as it is moving the body in spiritual, emotional and physical pain while being whipped; devoid of the original purposes of daaance - celebration, reverence and communication. My ship landed in Jamaica laden with culture which, over time, became hidden, lost, overlooked and in some instances nurtured. I have not forgotten my journey across the ocean or of the artistic ‘politrics’ which perceive my ocean memories as invalid. “Other” alien memories in every artistic expression are accepted as valid and primary and that which makes us dignified and human. In Daaance Coconut Daaance I sleep under the stars to be able to offer the sharing I received from the organic source practitioners, while searching to find my personal truth. Black dancers have, for centuries, screamed “Llow mi Nuh! A Fi Mi Badi Memries” (Allow me please, these are my body memories), because of the combination of experiences through which they struggle to find their daaancing feet (literally and otherwise) after years of unanswered “shouts” to be allowed to daaance proudly without the domination which their soul remembers. Black people should no longer bow to the dominant and accepted foreign body languages to gain acceptance and approval. We cannot allow our own cultural expressions to be segregated, alienated, underestimated or marginalized. Black daaancing bodies all present a similar Afro-centric historical past. The bodies communicate in daaance languages which embrace and represent the different nation languages such as Ebonics – U.S.A, Creole -French Caribbean Islands, Papiamento-Dutch Caribbean Islands, Jamaican language (Patois)……… I want to share a story about my Chinese grandfather. He was seen, by a gentleman who frequently shopped at his supermarket in Mandeville, looking lost in Half Way Tree in St. Andrew, Jamaica. The gentleman said, “Mr. Lee, how u so far from you place?” He continued by asking, “Mr. Lee is loss (lost) u loss (lost)?” Mr. Lee answered by saying, “Me no loss (I am not lost), see me ya (here), the place loss (lost)”. Throughout the Diaspora many black people are lost, not the place. but the individual. As a result, they accept hegemonic norms such as designating all of the Americas as discovered by Columbus as naming them ‘the so-called New World”. These geographic locations, however, existed from the beginning time with inhabitants that traded with Africans and were never lost. This designation became accepted as the norm and is only recently being questioned as incorrect. The late Kamau Brathwaite states that, “In the Caribbean, Africa explodes like a capsule.” The coconut inside the ‘tidylectic’ waves of the ocean washed all the ancestral knowledge ashore empowering my grounding in what already existed and thereby assisting with my goal of finding ‘truth’. .
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