On Saturday Night, July 2nd, the TLG girls went
to the Oasis Resort to watch our drumming
and dancing teachers perform.
It was the brunyi who invited us there,
a young guy from New Hampshire
on a grant to study African drumming:
Come to the Oasis tonight at seven.
There was drumming, true,
a dozen drummers drumming
in a line along the back of the stage,
thrumming on drums of all sizes.
The brunyi tried to keep up.
An audience full of brunyis
at the brunyi resort by the sea
close to Cape Coast Castle
where years ago slaves
were stored and tortured,
shipped to distant lands.
And now, we sip fruit drinks
we probably pay too much for,
but it's the least we can do, considering.
Enter whirling yellow and blue dervishes
They dance of warriors in battle,
harvest, courtship, joie de vivre,
black limbs: legs, torso, arms, feet
swinging, moving close to the earth
I think of the tap dancers:
Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly,
Bill “Bojangles” Robinson,
Gregory Hines, Savion Glover
Here, the roots, the origins,
bare feet on red clay,
stomping hopping tumbling
whizzing—their bodies
blur into movement.
Effortless ease, like palm oil,
like the young boy who peels
and opens the coconut top
with his machete,
clean and flawlessly
like the woman who carries
a bundle of firewood on her head,
never fumbling,
not even when
she must stoop down
humbly and pick up
another load.
Like the baby on her mother's back,
still and content,
close to breath and heartbeat
the pulse of life
from which she came.
Stillness in motion
freeze frame shots
kicking punching leaping
turning turning turn-
ing, sweat on black bodies,
the drum hypnotic,
pulling you into
the rhythm of the soil.
Come dance with me!
Come, O'Brunyis!
(You can't do it like us
but you can try.)
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