Ancestral Recall
My friend Audrea and I listened exclusively to trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah during a work session yesterday that included convo about mutual aid, disaster preparedness and how best to live out a radical vision of care during this pandemic.
Given that crisis is the very nature of capitalism, as the system contracts, how do we move forward with grace, compassion, love and even deeper commitment to liberatory values? Values that uplift the earth, the most vulnerable and alternatives to an economic system that places the needs of capital above all else?
The title of aTunde Adjuah’s latest album, “Ancestral Recall,” offers clues. As do two of my favorite tracks on the record, “Ritual: (Rise of Chief Adjuah)” and “Double Consciousness,” the latter a nod to W. E. B. Du Bois’ term for the psychological challenge Black folk in Amerikkka face in always having to see ourselves through a white supremacist society’s eyes - “measuring oneself by the means of a nation that looks back in contempt.” My mom gave me a copy of Du Bois’ masterwork The Souls of Black Folk in 5th grade. I look back at this event with deep gratitude—and a measure of disbelief. Why? And how? How could she have known? How could she have known the countless times I would take refuge in Du Bois’ words? In college when I learned about Du Bois’ socialism and read his economic writings, his work took on even deeper meaning. I realized yesterday that in this time, I must return not only to his writing, but the whole collection of visionary Black texts that raised me.
We decided to sit out Christian’s show at the Blue Note yesterday evening. In my heart I send thanks to him and his band for their melancholic, prophetic music. Music offering a guide back to the spiritual resources my people left for future generations trying to find their way out of the storm.