After Denko by Sweet Honey in the Rock

So I am currently going through a birthing process as I complete my first major project for my Performance Studies degree.

As I should, I turned to song a poetry by the women to fortify my body and voice. I spent this weekend writing, and listening to Nina, Sweet Honey, Alice Coltrane and meditating on words actions movement voice history and next steps.

Denko is a Bambara song offered to and by women traveling through the birthing process. I am birthing right now and call on this song for light, wisdom, and strength, and clarity.
Because my professor, Judith Casselberry, is brilliant she played the song today in my class. She didn't know I needed it, but she so knew I did.

I wrote this in class

After Denko/ a meditation on birthing words, light, wisdom

1.
i am here because the rattle of the blues brings down the spirits because gravel in nina's throat loosens teh music in mine

because i don't know my mother's mother's mother's name but she has a song to sing through me

because when i speak i want audre to wink and alice to clap three times

because my body is not a toy or a toilet or a laboratory or an existential dilemma

2.
the spirit quivers in the space where dreams are fertilized and nurtured
move the mountains spirits rattle the webs lose loosen the breath

let the blood warm the skin
there is a riff the sun bakes only this body translates

let us be born
let us be born
let us be born

sweep me up in a ring-shout

i am healed by the rattle fed by the drum

ashe

-love and light,

ebony