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Dance to Your Shadow:  Chasing a Song Across the World

    The following excerpts are from travel in the Georgia Sea Islands on Sapelo Island, including

 a sound sample for a play song described in Chapter 18.  (All material copyrighted, no copy

or re-print is authorized without written permission of the author.)

    For general information about the book click here.  To contact Pam call (510) 530-7826

or e-mail  pamswan@pamswan.com

From Chapter 16:  Barrier Islands

    Georgia does not fling itself dramatically into the sea, with cliffs and coves and rocky shores,

as some coastal landscapes do. Instead, her loamy soil slips modestly through hardwood swamp

and marsh and grassy bog, easing itself down into the warm Atlantic behind a series of graceful

 barrier islands.

    Georgia’s intercourse with the sea is a private affair. If you want to see it you have to stay

with her a while, make your way through her heartland and onto the islands which protect her,

 and beyond–-to the edge of her corporal body. You have to get to know her a little before she

 shows you her snow-white dunes, her pounding ocean surf, open stretches of pristine sand and

 screaming seabirds. Once found, Georgia’s beaches are as wild and beautiful as any in the world,

 but they are not easily won. She requires that you get to know her first, to pass through herself

 to touch her shore. Georgia is not easy. I like that about her.

    I made my way from Savannah down to Sapelo Island that warm October afternoon, through

a series of progressively smaller back roads. I watched the landscape move from red clay and

tall pine to sandy soil and crooked oak. As the roads got smaller and more remote, the canopy

 of Spanish moss opened up into a grassy marsh, where I pushed on through saw palmetto and

 grazing egrets toward the simple wooden dock at Meridian.

    The air was soft and orange with afternoon light, and the seagrass glowed a thousand shades

 of green. Along the way, signs reading "Caution, Manatee Area" were loosely posted on

shallow river crossings. "Yes’m, we see Manatee here at the dock sometime." Said one of the

 locals fishing off the pier. "They don’t bother nobody."

    It takes 38 minutes to fly from Atlanta to Savannah on a Delta 727. Another hour in a rental

 car brings you to the tiny Meridian dock on the steamy inland coast. Then, after the locals

have loaded their mainland supplies and fishing poles and boxes of groceries aboard the little

 ferry Anne-Marie, it takes 147 years and 35 minutes to cross Doboy Sound and arrive at

Marsh Landing, on the Southern end of Sapelo Island.

From Chapter 18:   Are You Ibo?

    She lived on Sapelo. She turned its earth, and breathed its marshy air, and fed her blood each

evening to its greedy bugs. She pulled okra from its gardens and cotton from its thorny fields,

and in the tidal moon pulled silver fishes from its shallow bays.

    She bore twenty-two children on her bed in the thick, steamy darkness of its longest nights,

 and in the end, after freedom came, she died beneath its mossy oaks, in a wooden cabin

beside her husband–-both of them too old and weak to escape the burning building alive.

She lived on Sapelo. But first, she lived in Africa.

    Before the sack, before the chains, before the terrifying ship, she lived in Africa. Where

young men danced and yams grew wild and rice was pounded in the odu, she lived in Africa

 on a grassy plain. And all night long, before the catchers came, all night long beside her

mother in the village, while Onwa the moon drew water through the Niger delta, she

 listened to the stories by the fire.

    She was old enough by then to understand the trickster tortoise wasn’t real, though

in her dreams sometimes he frightened her a little–-but it was just a story now, she knew.

 It was a good one though, and when the nwoke told it–-his eyes and hands and words dancing

 up behind the sparks–-she still let herself believe a little sometimes, before she fell asleep.

    The night she fell asleep in Africa for the last time, she slept beside her mother. In the

 morning, she helped her auntie tie the baby on her back, and they both set off together for

 the field where groundnuts grew. By end of day the catchers came, and she was in a sack,

 tied up with other screaming, frightened children. And in the chains, and on the ship, and

 during all those weeks across the water, she cried and wailed, and then fell silent like the

 rest. The chains made sores, and the dead made smells, and the sick and angry made an awful

 sound. And when it all was done she stood on a block, and they looked at her teeth, and

money changed hands, and Hannah became a slave on Sapelo.

    "I bu onye Ibo?" The young man whispered, but Hannah did not trust her ears.

    "I bu onye Ibo?" He asked again–-"Are you Ibo?"

    She answered him in English. "Yes, I am." She had found another one like her, at least a

little like her, in this place. Someone who remembered groundnuts and wild yams. A boy who

once had danced on grassy plains, and who had heard the stories of the tortoise.

    She took comfort in the sound of Ibo in his mouth, this boy called Carolina. And comfort

in the prayers he said, familiar gods and signs and beads. Their grandchildren’s grandchildren

would remember the way they used to talk at home, the funny words and chants, and how

they prayed each evening on the beads, facing East.

    They built their churches on Sapelo facing East. They sang and danced and worshiped facing

 East. They taught their children to remember, and even after generations passed and layers of

 Christian theology settled in over African customs, their children’s children’s children on this

 island were still praying to the East. East toward God. East toward Africa.

    Another group of slaves arrived on Sapelo–-hollow, frightened, hungry, dragging their chains

 up the same dusty road Hannah had walked her first day here–-but they had a new story to tell.

 The Ibo on their ship did not go quietly down to the St. Simons shore. They rose up, those

young men who knew the taste of groundnuts and wild yams, those who knew the story of the

 tortoise, the young men who had danced on the grassy plain, they all rose up together. And

when it was time to get off that ship, with the last of their dignity and free will, they gave

themselves to the water of Dunbar Creek, and not to Thomas Spalding.

    The story of those Ibo, whispered from mouth to ear on Sapelo, began to grow and change.

Some said they did not drown, but that they walked back to Africa, on the water that had brought

them here. Some swore they saw the young men lift above the ground and fly. In every telling

of the story, they went home. Hannah knew, from listening to Ibo fables told by the nwoke, that

the meaning of a story could be true, even if the story wasn’t real.

    This was a good one, a story of hope, a new tradition. And she listened by the fire with her

own children as their father gave life to the story of Ebo Landing–-his eyes and hands and words

dancing up behind the sparks–-and even then, she let herself believe a little sometimes, before

she fell asleep.

    Hannah watched her children playing games that children play. Chase and catch and push

and hide, and story-songs that smuggle first flirtations in a lyric, or a shove, or a little piece

of cloth. She watched them sing and sway and act out songs they made up new each day, or so

they thought. Songs whose rise and fall and meaning was older than they could possibly imagine.

    She watched the boys show off, pretending to wrap a bundle of trinkets in their cloth,

treasures to take to the one they love. She heard them sing and chant the rhyme, and couldn’t

help but think of young men dancing on the grassy plain...   Click here for sound sample

Little Johnny Brown

Spread your comfort down

Little Johnny Brown

Spread your comfort down...

They laid their little piece of blanket on the ground, their comforter–-their ‘comfort’, and

pretending to pack treasures inside the bundle, they folded it into a sack to carry on the shoulder...

Fold one corner, Johnny Brown

Fold another corner, Johnny Brown

Fold another corner, Johnny Brown

Fold another corner, Johnny Brown...

Then, acting out all the crazy, lovesick behavior of adults, they mocked their own first feelings

of attraction, laughing and teasing as they played...

Take it to your lover, Johnny Brown

Take it to your lover, Johnny Brown

Show her your motion, Johnny Brown

Show her your motion, Johnny Brown...

Without the complications of understanding, their verses imitated dances and stories of adults...

Lope like a buzzard, Johnny Brown

Lope like a buzzard, Johnny Brown

Ride across the ocean, Johnny Brown

Ride across the ocean, Johnny Brown...

    And on and on the songs would go, ring-plays and dance-songs and counting games and more,

passing time and creating new traditions that would last 150 years, and others that would be

forgotten before this season’s sweetgrass stalks went brown.

    Everyone sang on Sapelo. Walking on the road and working in the field, in play and worship

and fear and grief. They even sang in coded message to warn each other, or offer encouragement,

or pass information when plain words were too dangerous.

    Singing made contact for strangers in old familiar ways. Through all these languages and

cultures, all these very different Africans who found themselves bound together in chains

and pressed together in poverty, forced to form communities and families and find a common

language, through all these differences there was a sound in common–-the response.

    Every language, every tribe, every African who came to Sapelo knew the sound of a

storyteller or a singer calling out, and the rhythmic rush of voices in response. It didn’t matter

what the words were, the pattern was familiar. You call, we answer.

Eze elina, elina: Sala!

Nnabe chineke: Amanye!

Misha Kwe: Kwa!

Can I get an Amen: Amen!

Take it to your lover: Johnny Brown!

    It found its way into the music of the children, the worksongs in the fields, and the worship in

the churches on the island–-churches facing East. Beyond words, the rhythm of call-and-response

was unifying, comforting, the foundation of social music.