{"id":145651,"date":"2020-06-18T10:53:10","date_gmt":"2020-06-18T14:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=145651"},"modified":"2020-06-18T10:53:10","modified_gmt":"2020-06-18T14:53:10","slug":"dance-time-across-the-diaspora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/06\/18\/dance-time-across-the-diaspora\/","title":{"rendered":"Dance Time, across the Diaspora"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My father, at cocktail parties, liked to get children dancing.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d be in the backyard flinging ourselves at and off things: tire swings, tree branches, each other. He\u2019d wander out, beer or scotch in hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is this?\u201d he\u2019d ask in a loud voice. \u201cThe annual Foolishness International board meeting?\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d fill with a pleasant warmth.<\/p>\n

My father would toss one or two of us over his shoulders. He\u2019d run. We\u2019d chase him to the patio or the living room\u2014wherever the stereo system was.<\/p>\n

\u201cDance time!\u201d he\u2019d say.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d teach us moves. Sometimes he\u2019d even do a little choreography. We\u2019d show off, get sweaty. Shy children my father would take by the hand. He\u2019d coax and twirl them until they loosened. I was shy, but not when dancing with him.<\/p>\n

\u201cEiii,\u201d he\u2019d say about any child who was really feeling the vibe.<\/p>\n

My father was Ghanaian. Eiii <\/em>is a sound many Ghanaians make several times a day. Depending on the context and tone, it can mean either that something is very good or very bad. Toward dancing children, my father always meant the sound encouragingly.<\/p>\n

Children loved my father. He was playful and funny. For his United Nations job, we moved to a new country every few years: Tanzania, England, Uganda, Italy, Ethiopia. There was little in my life, growing up, that was constant. But at our welcome cocktail party (there was always a welcome cocktail party), I could always count on my father to help me make friends. Those friendships often lasted until we moved again. Most of the children of United Nations employees attend international schools together.<\/p>\n

Everywhere we lived, my father\u2019s circle of colleagues and friends was very diverse\u2014multinational and multiracial. They worked for UN agencies, or at various embassies, NGOs, and global enterprises. To parties at their homes\u2014if the hosts were white\u2014my father sometimes brought his own mixtapes.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, I\u2019m African,\u201d he\u2019d joke as he handed them the tape or CD, \u201cI need proper dance music.\u201d<\/p>\n

He rarely brought his own music to Black people\u2019s parties. Indeed, the one time I can remember him doing so was because\u2014at that particular friend\u2019s previous party\u2014slow, white country music had been prominently played. That friend was Kenyan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is with you Kenyans and this cowboy music<\/a>?\u201d my father asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like the stories,\u201d his friend said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m an Ashanti,\u201d my father said\u2014referring to his tribe. \u201cWe too are storytellers. Even our drums gossip<\/a>. But what we are listening to now are bedtime stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

His friend laughed at my father\u2019s joke, and he laughed again months later, when my father handed him a mixtape.<\/p>\n

\u201cParty stories,\u201d my father said.<\/p>\n

On my father\u2019s mixtapes: Soukous music from what was then Zaire and is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo\u2014Papa Wemba and Koffi Olomide. Soca from Trinidad and Tobago\u2014Mighty Sparrow and Maestro. Mbalax from Senegal\u2014Youssou N\u2019Dour and Fatou Guewel.\u00a0 Black American funk and R&B\u2014Earth, Wind and Fire, Aretha Franklin. And always heavily represented: Ghanaian and Nigerian Highlife and Afrobeat. E. T. Mensah and the Tempos; Bobby Benson; Akosua Agyapong; George Darko; Ebo Taylor; Amakye Dede; and, of course, Fela Kuti.<\/p>\n

To start the children\u2019s dance party, my father often replaced whatever was playing with something more to his liking. If an adult protested, he\u2019d say, \u201cEiii, I\u2019m the DJ.\u201d The eiii<\/em>, in that case, was a reproach.<\/p>\n

I recall a party in Addis Ababa. I was either eight or nine. Against the rules, I\u2019d drunk more than one Coca-Cola. Plus, I\u2019d had cake. Even before we danced, my body buzzed.<\/p>\n

The dance floor was on the grass by the pool. My father played \u201cZombie\u201d by Fela Kuti. I had heard the song before, but that night, I heard it anew.<\/p>\n

\u201cZombie,\u201d like a lot of Ghanaian and Nigerian music, is cyclical. The horns enter with a short fanfare. The lyrics are call and response. With each cycle, the song becomes more urgent. The temperature rises, drops dramatically, then comes back hotter.<\/p>\n

Kuti sings: Attention! Quick March! Slow March! <\/em>My father had us follow Kuti\u2019s orders. He led us in a march with our arms held straight out and taut like zombies. Then, with the horn lines, we went wild\u2014arms swinging, legs kicking. By the end of the song, I was out of breath.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was funky,\u201d my father said. He low-fived each of us.<\/p>\n

I did not know the meaning of the \u201cZombie\u201d lyrics. I had not paid close attention. In the car home, as I sat with my head against the back seat window, tired and happy, my father explained that \u201cZombie\u201d was a protest song\u2014against the brutal and senseless violence enacted upon the Nigerian people by the nation\u2019s army.<\/p>\n

\u201cKuti is saying that the army is full of zombies,\u201d my father said. Then he quoted the lyrics, in Nigerian Pidgin, which is mutually intelligible with Ghanaian Pidgin: \u201cZombie no go think, unless you tell am to think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey only think if they\u2019re told to?\u201d I deduced.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d he said. \u201cThey just do what the government tells them to do, even kill people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s wrong,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d he said, \u201cand Fela got in trouble for writing and performing the song. It became popular. The government didn\u2019t like it at all. They arrested him, beat him. But, through music, he stood up for what he believed in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFunky and brave,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d he said. I liked that he laughed.<\/p>\n

Teaching my sister and me about the history, politics, customs, and culture of Black people, Africa, West Africa, Ghana, and the Ashanti tribe was one of my father\u2019s great preoccupations. On that front, he did not trust our textbooks. Although our schools were called international, <\/em>the curricula were modeled on either the American or the British system. There was little focus on Africa, even when we were physically located there. And \u201cthey will mostly teach you the white, Western versions of everything,\u201d my father said.<\/p>\n

My father was also worried that my sister and I would not know Ghana in a deep way; and more than that, he was worried that we would only have a weak sense of home. Our mother is Armenian American. Our parents divorced when I was two and my sister was a year old. My father had primary custody. We were distant from our mother. She lived in America, and we saw her rarely. It would be hard for us to know her culture. My father taught us to say\u2014when asked where we were from\u2014that we were Ghanaian. Yet, from Ghana, in many ways, we were also distant. Some winter and summer breaks, we visited our grandparents in Kumasi. But we stayed only a few weeks at a time. We didn\u2019t speak Twi. When, among my father\u2019s family, I said eiii, <\/em>everyone laughed. Obruni<\/em>, some in my father\u2019s hometown called me\u2014foreigner.<\/p>\n

Still, to make us feel Ghanaian, my father tried. After school, before dinner, he often gave us lessons. He taught us about the pre-Christian Ashanti gods. Nyame, the sky god. Asase Yaa, the earth goddess. Anansi, the trickster spider who accidentally spread wisdom around the world while trying to steal it all for himself. The abosom<\/em>\u2014spirits who take the form of trees, rivers, animals, and stones.<\/p>\n

Both my grandfather and grandmother came from royal families. My father taught us about the roles my ancestors played in advising the asantehene<\/em>, the king, and mediating disputes among people in their villages.<\/p>\n

In the Ashanti tradition, ancestors are to be venerated. They watch over and protect us, unless they feel ignored. If they do not get their due, we can expect punishment. On our balcony in Rome, my father showed me how to pour libation.<\/p>\n

We learned about the Ghanaian fight for independence against the British, and about the vision of Ghana\u2019s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, for Pan-Africanism\u2014unity between all people of African origins, both on the African continent and across the diaspora. I was drawn to this idea. Despite my lack of Twi, no matter where I lived, I was included in Pan-Africanism. I was connected to all Black people, and they to me.<\/p>\n

For the same reason that I loved learning about Pan-Africanism, some of my favorite lessons my father taught me were about music.<\/p>\n

Ashanti rhythms, he told me, are among the roots of some of the best Black inventions\u2014the blues, jazz, highlife, Afrobeat, funk. Those rhythms survived the Middle Passage.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can hear echoes of Ashanti rhythms in Black American music. Then, through trade, tourism, and radio, Black American music forms traveled back to Africa, where they influenced the creation of highlife and Afrobeat. We know, for example, that Fela Kuti was inspired by James Brown.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story, to me, seemed miraculous, though I didn\u2019t, then, work to understand why. Now I realize that it was a story of survival, of resilience, of strong roots and wide branches, of mutuality, homecoming, and hope.<\/p>\n

My father died when I was thirteen. The many years passed have taught me that I will never stop grieving.<\/p>\n

Through my teens and early twenties, for no good reason, I rarely listened to highlife or Afrobeat. Hip-hop and R&B were what I turned to, almost exclusively. Then, when I was twenty-nine, after eighteen years, I returned to Ghana. There were many reasons why it had been that long. My father\u2019s cancer. The instability that followed his death. The cost of the ticket, once I moved, at eighteen, to New York. But at twenty-nine, I got a job with decent pay and paid time off.<\/p>\n

I flew into Accra and took a bus to Kumasi to see my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Almost immediately upon arrival, in a profound way, I felt my father close to me. I saw his face in the faces of people bustling around the airport. I heard him in the voice of a stranger beside me as we waited for our luggage. He had been met by a large group.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at you,\u201d he said to a girl of four or five. \u201cMadam. You are an old lady now.\u201d It was my father\u2019s sense of humor.<\/p>\n

Most of all, though, I located him in the music. On the bus to Kumasi, highlife and Afrobeat. In my uncle\u2019s car, highlife. All day, my grandparents played highlife on the radio.<\/p>\n

How stupid I\u2019ve been, <\/em>I thought. I could have been listening all along.<\/p>\n

Back in New York, I added to the hip-hop and R&B highlife and Afrobeat. Alone in my room, at the cocktail parties in my mind, I danced with my father.<\/p>\n

Years later, I met the man who would become my partner. Professionally, he plays the saxophone. Jazz, funk, Afrobeat. We visit Ghana often. While there, he takes Ashanti drumming lessons, and we both take dance lessons. We go to hear live music in the old and new traditions. We have befriended a group of jazz musicians in Accra\u2014the Ghana Jazz Collective<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These days, musicians like Sarkodie, from Ghana, and Davido, who is Nigerian American, have achieved global success with a mix of, among other genres, hip-hop and Afrobeat. A circle is endless.<\/p>\n

\u201cEiii,\u201d my father might have said, delighted. \u201cDance time!\u201d<\/p>\n

On our last trip, a little less than a year ago, my partner and I went together to meet the highlife legend Koo Nimo<\/a>, who my grandmother said used to liked her very much when they were young. He told us that, in Ashantiland, drum, dance, and song play central roles in all aspects of life. My father said this to us often. At Ashanti funerals, there is music and dancing. There is joy\u2014a celebration of the departed person\u2019s life. I thought of how, at home, I danced with my memories of my father. I was keeping the tradition\u2014veneration and celebration, strong roots and wide branches.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nadia Owusu is a Brooklyn-based writer and urban planner. She is the author of <\/em>So Devilish a Fire (2018)\u00a0and <\/em>Aftershocks: A Memoir, forthcoming in 2021. Her writing has appeared in the <\/em>New York Times,<\/em> Literary Review, <\/em>Catapult, and other publications. Nadia grew up in Rome, Addis Ababa, Kampala, Dar es Salaam, Kumasi, and London. She is an associate director at Living Cities, an economic racial justice organization.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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