During the month of August, 2012, Teli Shabu and I entertained a sizeable group for a dinner at Granite Farms. Teli had been entertaining our guests on his melodic Kora for a number of years already. It was the most appropriate dinner sounds I have ever heard.
Yet the sound of the Kora is not even half of the story. The Kora has such an engaging origin in Guinea, West Africa, that it can only be matched by it's evolutionary journey to the modern stages of the most influential international music played by African musicians. The Kora has 21 fishing strings connected to a guard and an wooden rod that makes the whole instrument looking like an odd shaped laddle covered with goat skin.
The Kora has more than just light connections to food in its engineering, in any case, I had decided to make it a central part of my dinners and lectures. Teli's story was just as long. It obviously started in Africa, through the Transatlantic slave trade routes, then back to Africa where he leared the stories and the playing of the Kora and finally right back to the U.S.
How the instrument was invented is shrouded in more mystery than most instruments. Two families came up with a similar story to each of their families about how each had came into the possession of the instrument. For the longest time, those were the only the two families that could produce the kora instruments as well as the players. Those two skills was a highly guarded family secret. A few other families later joined the ranks of Koran dynasties and they all dominate the mellodic music to this day.
For all the instruments and musicians I could have engaged that night, none would have been more fitting than a kora. I had a deep urge to give a talk that would reflect my on my experience of living in the South for over two decades. The Kora itself had evolved in West Africa as an instrument of historians or keepers of the village memory. The Kora players are known as griots.
Those kora players would serenade every important social gathering that were important to the community. Then, just like now, the Kora player was a major attraction, not just for it's eclectic sound of griot but also for the amazing history that was all memorized in the Kora players head going back hundreds of years back.
On that night, I was planning to take a deep and honest look at history of the place I had come to call home longer than I had lived in Africa as a turning point in my work. For that point, I wanted to talk about the of South with a view of finding a way to create a better society in a bid to correct some the damages that left all transatlantic cultures deeply wounded. The three cultures I am referring to are Africans, Southern Whites and African America that came out of the interactions between the first two cultures.
I had been active in community organizing for almost 5 years before joing culinary school. I felt especially honored that my friends whom I had been working with around issues of food justice were present. Others showed up for the first time and a few have remained friends ever since.
Roxanne L London and Maya Corneille, for example, continued to be major supporters in my learning and growth. Many others supported my efforts through their organizations. A representative of Burts office in Durham, the largest sustainable body products in the U.S , was present.
Maya Corneille, a professor of psychology at A&T University at the time, was a major advisor and strategist. She also doubled up as a s'ues chef along a group of two Durhamites ladies: Andrea Horn and Bree Davis. Devin D. Brown was mostly the only male in the Durham team. Devin was like the coach. He was the one who put the Durham group together. Where Devin went, we followed. He was and still is a kindred spirit. The group kept vigil like Cassandra in Divine Comedy during the most difficult years my work.
Roxanne L London was a warrior per excellence. She just showed in force and did what needed to be done. One thing that was unique about Roxanne was that she never showed up alone. She was rather quiet but hard to miss or forget. She kept company of strong souls, like Kim Soden and many others.
It was also the first time I talked about a concept I later called Blackism. While I did not call it that at the time, all the energy from the event caused me to take lots of notes about what I observed and felt. It was definitely the most intensive dinner I ever had until that day. I felt as if it was a major turning point and in so many ways it was. It was also my first dinner to appear in a major magazine too. That meant having three photographer periodically coming in and out of the kitchen. In addition, Kelly Taylor, my best teacher from culinary school was a guest. But she would periodically pop in and that was quite comforting.
My friend Meri Hyöky and international photographer showed with a camera after many conversations online. Meri had deep interests in food and activism. She captured more of my events during these formative years for free. I obviously couldn't have afforded to pay many of the services that many of those friends graciously offered.
I was shocked beyond words when a strong-built lady introduced herself as Meri in the steamy kitchen almost halfway int the dinner preparation. I had always thought I had been conversing with a man during our many social media texts. Her Finish name made it hard to identify her gender. This was the beginning of a two years of very productive collaboration. She would later marry her girlfriend a few years later and I am happy for them.
Teza Tessa Eliza Thraves was also in attendance and she too has deep and strong footprints in my understanding of food in the South in all its complexities. She once invited me along with some young African American student farmers to a weekend workshop in Lynchburg Virginia where Will Allen was conducting a workshop on acquaponics.
Will would go on to win the McArthur genius award years later. Will also built the garden for Mitchell Obama at the White House. The workshop and conversation at hotel we stayed at was pivotal.
Teza would later marry her girlfriend in an elaborate wedding. These souls amongst others taught me tolerance galore. There are so many things that I don't understand and even more that I will never understand.
What I can say is that of all the problems we as humans have, what two consenting adults do is none of my business. It shouldn't be the basis of discriminating against them.
Having been born in the Global south and currently living in the American South for last three decades, I can say that I have a fair idea about discrimination. If I were to point out one common root of discrimination, I would pick false exceptionalism. Based on that simple but painful examples above, I had to admit that there is nothing exceptional about having a particular sexual orientation.
In my own evolutionary thinking, I thought it was a White culture. But then my friend and colleague Michael Twitty mentioned that he was gay at a keynote address attended in Durham.
But the hardest and most entrenched bigotry was that it's a western culture. My late friend Binyavanga Wainaina would later announce that he was gay. The late Binyavanga was one of the most brilliant young Kenyan I knew. What was even more amazing was the fact that he had a rare combination of brilliance and a big heart.
I knew Binyavanga through food mostly but also through activism and intellectual pursuits. I could understand some of the pains, pressures and imperfections that come with a big heart and big heads in light of oppression.
Part of Binyavanga's problem was that he was a visionary in a barren land.
I was not surprised to see him on Times Magazine's 2006 list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
My conclusion at the dinner at Granite Farm was that I wish that White Southerners were indeed a superior group of people. But then the poverty and long racial tension in the region, not to mention the historical losses in the civil war can hardly constitute evidence of such superiority.
I would dare say that if certain sexual orientation makes people superior, let’s tally all the crimes committed by the worst criminals in each of our lives and see if it correlates with their sexual orientation or any other bigotry.
While I know of only a few gay men and women, I know of even fewer amongst all groups who are morally off the charts. The few morally straight or at least trying to be straight do not neatly fall on one side of the sexual divide.
In the end, let us consider that the opportunity cost of oppressing others in fighting against our own oppression. That is part of the reasons behind poor Whites supporting leaders who consider and treat them like trash. Hell, they even call them as much. In the same light, Africans will shout BLM and boycott White businesses while getting worse treatment at the hands of their wealthy elites and leaders.
May we take the que and draw our own battle lines. My own promise is that when I draw my battle lines, I will be both honest and steadfast with myself, regardless of the White Gaze and the Black Haze. Racism in a way is like a negative Kora and Blackism is the damaging tune we all innocently hum to ourselves and hence block out the true Kora and the healing memories it carries.