A Griot

Greetings,

One day I write “Blues Music Story” on the board. I discuss the African Diaspora, history,slavery, working on farms for little money and how they gathered to make music at the end of long hard days.

How the blues manifested as men and women left home on an economic migration for better jobs just like China now. How the blues allowed them to express their feelings about loss, separation from family and friends. How it's a “feeling, emotional, deep in your spirit soul,” music.

I pulled out my blues harp and they said, “Oh it’s a chochin,” in Mandarin.

“Want to hear some blues?”

“Yes!”

I blew some sweet slow stuff and then picked up the tempo and blasted rifts and wailing train whistles. Gave them a real sense of the music.

When you're a wandering minstrel or a Griot - a West African performer who perpetuates the oral traditions of a family or village by singing histories and tales; considered by musicologists to be a link with the acoustic blues - or a Seanachai - a traditional Irish storyteller of myths and legends - or a magician, soothsayer and Adept this comes naturally.

“You see. I am merely a conduit for music. It comes through me.”

Then we did a lesson about how to make a sandwich.

How to assemble the ingredients; bread, tomatoes, mayo, relish, turkey slices, mustard, onions and lettuce.

Suddenly, new music began. Everyone ran to a window.

Across the street an Indonesian boy sat on a piece of plywood in the shadow of a long tall Sally art deco three story building towering above a gated community filled with designer homes, wild tropical green blossoming fruit trees, displaced dysfunctional spoiled offspring spinning yo-yo's, sleeping on broken bamboo bed springs and swimming across flooded streams of dreams.

In his right hand he held a shining silver chisel. In his right, a flat edged hammer. He slammed metal against metal. He was on a bridge between the stone age and the iron age. Tap-tap-tap. Music flaking dust. He started singing an old village song remembering his family and rice paddies, feeling the wind carry his song.

A young girl using a broom made of thinned tree branches whisked a gentle rhythm creating a symphony.

Metta.