Original subtitles

When I stepped out of the cab in Brooklyn, I didn't know it

but I was about to meet Glinda The Good

you know, the witch who pranced through

enchanted poppy fields in the north of Oz,

and get a pair of ruby slippers.

Hi, Darius. Nice to meet you.

Her real name was Val Jeanty.

And she was raised on the island of Haiti,

not with a litter of prune-faced Munchkins.

Val fused the ancient skills of the ritual drummer

with the tools of the DJ in the Digital Age.

She was a sorcerous shamanic talent

with a gift for speaking to both the living and the dead.

I was impressed.

But I also realized,

this was just the first step on my long journey.

It was initiation. My ruby moment.

You have to cue me, because I can go on and on.

This space is totally energized.

I mean, I have experienced that in certain other circumstances.

But I only know energy like this,

like walking into very old churches.

I mean, it's electric, it's like very electric, very calming.

And of course, there is a whole thing about

art, spirituality, religion, magic.

If you put your hands close to a speaker

while there is some heavy bass,

you gonna feel something in your hands - that's frequency,

that's the physical

manifestation of frequency, right?

So there is some energy coming out of there that

you can't see but you feel it in your hands, sort of thing,

so frequencies coming from the Haitian culture

- Haitian voodoo culture,

we're dealing with specific rhythm patterns,

specific chants.

So it's already kind of pre-coded.

And certain songs you don't sing

after three p.m. on Thursdays,

you just don't.

And everyone knows not to sing it

because there is a frequency in that song

that you don't want to manifest.

So pretty much the sound manifests in physical reality.

So the sound that I am creating in here

is also what you are feeling.

So when you walk into the church or the temple,

because the frequency is still there,

there is a reminiscence of it that is in the space,

that stays there,

you can't really get rid of it

- it becomes part of the fabric of that space.

This is the house I grew up in.

It sits on a patch of overly-taxed landfill

in Hamden, Connecticut.

I've sailed to South and Central America.

I've lived in Los Angeles, New York, and Montreal.

Finally, I settled in Berlin.

After ten amazing years in that city of ravens,

a place I felt was my natural home,

Hamden was the last place

I ever imagined I would end up in life.

I'd rather fight flesh-eating zombies

in a isolated pocket of Pennsylvania.

My name is Darius James.

If you're familiar with me at all,

its because I published two books

- "Negrophobia" and

"That's Blaxploitation: Roots of the Baadasssss'Tude"

back in the nineties.

I came back to this house in January of 2007.

My time in Berlin had come to an abrupt end.

My father had died.

He was 81 years old.

All that remained of my father was his mask collection

and a cardboard box filled with ashes.

I have not touched either since my return.

My childhood home had become a mausoleum.

I live in this house with my younger sister, Jeri.

She is the sweetest person I know

and she is the only reason why I am still here.

In an early stage of my search I went to an exhibition

at the Caribbean Cultural Center in Manhattan,

titled "Standing with Papa Legba - Vodu at the crossroads".

It was an unusual look at Haitian spiritual traditions

through the lens of contemporary art.

That's where I met its young curator, Shantrelle Lewis.

Shantrelle reminds me of a young Muhammad Ali.

She has the distinct lines

and grace of a dancer and the mind of a boxer.

I wanted to know more about her.

I had a feeling she was more than professionally involved

with the themes of her exhibition.

So a few weeks later

I dropped by at her home in Brooklyn.

Hey - welcome to mi casa.

So, I practice Lukumi,

which is a derivative of Yoruba spirituality.

A part, a basic part of that is the understanding of the role

that ancestors play in your existence

and the way you move about the world

on a daily basis and you know. Ancestors walk with you...

They're not just off somewhere in this random kingdom

but they protect you every single day

and so on basic altars you may see glasses of water

and again each glass representing

a different group of ancestors...

What is what you actually acknowledge in your ancestors?

This is a daily practice.

I try to acknowledge them on a daily basis.

I generally try to refresh my altar,

the glasses of water on Sundays.

Maybe this has something to do with my Catholic upbringing,

the Christian upbringing but that's the day

where I kind of starting my week of so

I like to do that on a Sunday.

I understand that.

It's kind of interesting, too, cause there is a wall,

in my home is surrounded by masks

and things which is my family,

of the paternal side in my family...

although my father insisted that

he wasn't influenced by voodoo at all.

Everything that I've discovered

since moving back in the house seems to contradict that.

On another visit to New York

I happen to be invited to spend the afternoon

in the home of Danny Simmons.

Danny is a worldly and unpretentious man

who is much more than the sum of his parts

- painter, writer, art collector and,

with his brother Russell,

producer of HBO's "Def Poetry-Jam".

He is a system of refuge and support for a broad artistic

and intellectual community in New York and beyond.

Thinking about my father

- this is an extraordinary collection.

My father collects masks from all over

and he has got some good pieces.

But when I've tried to talk with him about it in the past

in terms of spiritual powers of Africa

- he was kind of blind to that,

he was looking at it purely...

For aesthetic reasons?

That's what he was telling me - you know what I am saying?

Which kind of let to this project.

That there are these African influences in peoples lives...

Sure.

...that they don t want to acknowledge.

And I am - obviously, based on what I know about you,

you recognize those powers and you respect them.

Well, yeah. We've been taught, and people have been taught,

especially these generations prior to ours have been taught

that anything associated with Africa was bad.

Unless it was an aesthetic thing.

You can relate to the aesthetic of a mask

or you can relate to

the aesthetic of fabric or the aesthetic

- but the actual culture,

the actual people that was eshewed.

You can go to any museum and you can see African masks.

But they don't concentrate.

They call it art and it's not really art.

These are ritual items and objects

that people use for points of power

and for points of spiritual reference.

They don't talk about that and it s eshewed,

anything that's non-christian in this society is looked at

You can look at the same object as a European

and say this is a great mask.

Let me put some wax on it and shine it up

and put it next to a Picasso or something.

Once if you start talking about it

in its natural setting as a religious object,

people get upset and that s what we were taught.

You are one hundred percent right.

They're afraid because they really don't know it.

But if we look at what we have here

we will see what the truth is in that.

People have walked in here and looked at this stuff

and turned around and walked out.

People talk a lot of black stuff and say:

Oh no no, I can't be in a room with that stuff.

No its doen't work that way.

It's the absence of faith.

To begin with...

The more we look at what we have here - from Africa -

the more we look and get to understand

and let some of it be revealed to you

than you really see how fortunate you are.

And you see where your power lies

Absolutely.

The Power lies in your history...

For me I started collecting African art.

My father taught Black History.

But when I started painting years and years and years ago

and I started looking at the European Masters,

immediately I was attracted to Picasso and his cubist stuff

not knowing that that time he had been referencing African Art

or African objects to create this paintings

and to create this stuff.

You know I am a self-taught artist and as I looked deeper,

I started looking at where did he get this from?

Where did all these Europeans who are considered Masters

getting this stuff from?

So I moved beyond that and

started looking at things that were closer.

Like this painting here by Wifredo Lam,

an Afro-Cuban painter and the way he painted it.

It has deeper spiritual meaning than what Picasso put out there.

Picasso put figures out there

-Wifredo Lam tapped into spirits of Santeria.

And I had a natural affinity for that beyond the surface

to this actual spiritual of what an object is.

You mentioned the Cubans.

Okay. The Cubans they were able to maintain

a lot of their African heritage.

My godfather in my religion,

I m a Palo Mayombe, here did he ome from?

Cuba. What he brought came from Africa.

I felt when I walked into this house.

I thought: Man, I am amongst my people.

That's how I feel.

That's how I feel. I am a mongst my people.

I am glad we are now, some of us are looking a little deeper.

Together with my friend Kanene

I went to join our ancestors occupying Wall Street.

They weren't pounding drums in Zuccotti Park, though.

They took their movement underground;

camping out in silent protest underneath lower Broadway

since the 1690s.

Kanene is a dedicated

New York City public school teacher;

actress; and Zora Neale Hurston scholar.

Talking to her is like staring into

the high beams of a speeding, on-coming car.

Do you know much about the African burial ground?

Ironically I do and I don't and I do.

But it was like breaking news.

Because they were busy building some building.

That was the goal. Some financial building

- whatever building they were trying to build

and you just have to go, dig up the ground

and in that process of building the foundation

this became breaking news like oh oh

- we can't just build the foundation on these graves

and so it really started to come out. Was it like 95 or 96?

I think it was 95.

Yeah, it was 95, so I was in the fifth grade, so yeah, 95.

And they were like wow, shuut - we can't just build on this land

and the whole notion of the fact that these are slaves

it's not just any random grave.

These are the slaves that actually built New York City.

They literally build this city

and they were buried underneath rock and granite.

And the whole notion of it, you can't erase it.

And that's funny

because even now me as a social studies teacher,

I taught fifth grade social studies two years ago

and I had to prepare them for a fifth grade states test,

it's all this stuff about New York history

they need to know, fifth graders should know

- the difference between rural, suburban, and urban -

they need to know about the Niagra falls

and the New Trade routes, that were developed

they need to know these things.

And I usually feel like

because it's all war, it's all the glorification of war.

War of 1812, French and Indian War.

It's war, war, war and it never talks about the people,

it never talks about the real stories about people

and the rebellion and the revolution.

And so they gave me this book, and it was like this thick

just to prep them for the test, the test is in November,

school starts in September

and they had maybe two paragraphs

on slavery in this entire book.

It's the stuff on the Constitution

they had to learn, stuff on the Supreme Court,

the judicial branch, legislative branch,

branches of government,

all this stuff.

The Industrial Revolution

- all this stuff these little fifth graders need to know...

Wow, which is interesting because knowing about slavery

would put everything else in the perspective.

It would, because the whole capitalistic structure

of New York City and all of America

New York was the hub of capitalism at that time

and still is was all based on all of the slave labour.

The whole notion of Wall Street, Bank of New York

they all either insured slaves, invested in slaves.

The East India Company, West India Company,

all these companies

that we do or do not know, we do or do not recognize,

a lot of them, Lehmann Brothers, all of these companies

which are on Wall Street today - not all of them obviously,

but some of them still have a legacy

and wouldn't be the companies they were

if they weren't investing in slave labor back in the day.

The burial ground is at the heart of American capitalism.

Exactly!

Which was an interesting thing because as I was going

through the rotunde here they had a symbol from Legba...

Yes, the crossroads, yes!

The crossroads.

Which told me that the crossroads wasn't about

deciding what direction you are going to take,

what faded decision you are going to make

but rather it was about contradictions.

Hmhm.

Which is probably the reason

why Legba is considered a trickster.

Exactly, and I love Legba,

I mean Legba is Bugs Bunny. You know.

Yeah.

That whole notion of what is reality

and I can shift it based on perception

and what you are beholding to as reality.

That s existentialism, that can become nihilism and denial.

Because what is reality?

I mean New York would not be New York

without the backs of slaves.

Just like in a book by Zora Neale Hurston about Moses.

The whole story starts of with the fact

that there are these slaves in Egypt.

All the slavers on our back and we can't do anything about it.

We learn nothing but sorrow.

If nothing else, that's that lasting legacy that this leader,

this pharao wants to sit there and impart to us...

You mean nothing other than your labour.

Right, you see these beautiful temples,

you see these beautiful pyramides, right,

but that lasting legacy of the blood,

the sweat and the tears is still in everything that we see

and ironically that's the path that we must choose.

And the path that a lot of history books choose

is in one direction which is ah, erase that, it doesn't matter,

again nihilism, denial of the truth.

And I would literally sitting there, looking at this book,

under the pressure of preparing fifth graders -

seventy percent can not read on a fifth grade level.

This is in 2008 - so if you can't read on a fifth grade level

you really can't read.

And I have two month to prepare these kids.

And I am looking at the history again,

and I am really thinking to myself and say:

Wait a minute, did slavery not happen?

And so I had to go back and find other books

and other resources and teach that whole portion of history.

It s interesting, because you talked about lines

and here is a circle...

In the middle of Manhattan's financial district

is a sacred space.

It seems to exists as if some

mysterious happenstance of history

has joined forces with all the world's religions,

including Vodu,

to confront the very powers of Mammon

that Wall Street represents.

And I find, even here, we all must ask Legba

for his permission to pass through the gates.

And I think it's beautiful,

the way they designed this entire burial ground.

In terms of it does actually reference a lot

of the Sankofa symbols.

This is a monument to give these people

some form of a voice.

The thing that I am thinking about: past and present coexist.

Yes.

Past, present.

They're parallel.

Yeah.

And sometimes when you ask questions

they can become perpendicular and that's the power,

that's the power of asking questions:

Why? How? Where? Who? And then they also notice, it's raining.

Yeah.

I am noticing that.

I kind of like the image.

Hm?

I like the image.

My father never really understood

why I prefered living abroad.

I once wrote him a letter and explained the reasons

why I vowed I would never live again in the United States.

His only reply was that he didn't understand.

For me, why was simple. This place had nothing for me.

Or at least that's what I thought until

I was struck by a cold realization.

I was wrong.

There was something, maybe something unique.

One of the reasons I started this journey was

to find out what that something is.

Outside of a couple of trips to New Orleans,

this is my first visit to the deep south.

We rolled passed the manicured lawns

of Greenwood's middle class,

literally crossing the tracks, over into ''Baptist Town''.

As we arrived, we were greeted by an unexpected surprise

- Pastor McArthur McKinley -

Baptist Town's gold-tooth and gheri-curled reverend

in a Stacy Adam's suit.

Homeboy knew he was clean. I shook his hand and asked,

"Where can I get me a suit like that?"

"Are you a married man, son?", he asked.

"No, why?"

"Well, that's good, because if you were married,

and you wore a suit like mine,

it would only lead you into temptation",

he said, gold tooth glittering in the mississippi sun.

As you noticed I just read a scripture where Jesus promised

that he would go and prepare a place for us.

And I am going to do at this time

Sweet Home... it's a beautiful home.

♪ Sweet Home,

♪ Sweet Home,

♪ Lord I know

♪ Lord I wonder

♪ will I ever

♪ get home.

♪ Sweet Home

♪ it's a beautiful home,

♪ Sweet Home

♪ Lord I know

♪ Lord I wonder...

I'm feeling really ambivalent

for a lot of reasons.

I'm not in New York.

I'm among solid church-going folks who pay taxes to god

and have barbecues after service.

But the deep south is also Hoodoo country

where two-heads lay tricks,

sprinkle goofer dust and work mojos.

And this is stuff people don't talk about openly here

unless they're telling tales

about the one-eyed man deep in the woods makin' gris-gris bags

or singing about it in songs by Robert Johnson.

To them, asking the kind of questions I asked,

I'm just talking about "The Devil". Period.

Right here, right now we are in Baptist town.

Baptist town is like the save haven for the blues singer

like Robert Johnson, Honeyboy Edwards,

Guitar Slim.

All those guys would live in this area,

they live in this area,

so they wouldn't go to the cotton field and go to work

cause they live across the river

where the balls man would make sure they would be at work.

But they lived over here

and hide out in the houses and wouldn't go to work

and that's what guys like Robert Johnson

or guys like Honeyboy Edwards would do

because they can make more money

playing music on the corner

then they would picking cotton in the fields...

Robert Johnson would have been one hundred years old today.

And Greenwood was throwing the party.

But I really honestly didn't understand

who or what was being celebrated

If what Mr. Hoover said was true,

how was it that a man who played the blues

was being celebrated in a cotton museum?

So I thought I'd go talk with Steve LaVere.

Steve is a big presence in Greenwood's blues community.

And he plays an even bigger part

keeping the legacy of Robert Johnson alive.

Greenwood is the world's first long-stapled Cotton market

and it moved to Memphis about 1900.

So things don't move to quickly in the Delta as you know.

Things have a tendency to maintain

and retain and be retained and so that's what that's all about.

But as far as who owns Robert Johnson is concerned

which I think was one of the early posits

that you set for us in your question.

Robert Johnson and what is considered country blues

and really I think that's just

a small portion of all indiginous American music:

Jazz, American black gospel, white gospel

- it all has its roots in two primary cultures

that the world has produced:

the European culture and the African culture

and they came together on this continent.

Okay, I understand that aspect of the story

but that from what I understand there

is this whole generation of British musicians

who had discovered blues, you know American blues

and which was discarded by

and large but they picked it up

and created this whole sensation in rock music

in the 60s and the 70s.

When British musicians (who) were looking for songs to play

rather than write their own.

Why write your own when there is a guy like Robert Johnson

and has written the great song that we can do?

Let's do "Dust my broom",

lets do "Sweet Home Chicago",

let's do "Come on in my kitchen"

Right.

You know and so they got their energy behind that

and sold it back to America.

Yeah, I understand. I can see that.

Actually I heard a tape, it was an acoustic tape

that Keith Richards had done covering Robert Johnson songs.

That's when I began to have respect for Keith Richards,

knowing that he was a serious student of the music.

He said so on numbers of occasions.

We are here at the site where Robert Johnson is buried.

Let's go. It's right out here.

Most of the people do not have stones.

Lot of em early 1900s.

And you see some of them handmade

and a lot of them where just made with wood,

a cross made out of wood and they stuck it in the ground.

And Robert Johnson

he died right across this field over here

because he followed a girl home that night.

You'd be in this cotton field,

picking and jumping cotton all way down

to where you see them trees.

You would hear music coming from here.

Do you hear that singing, do you hear that singing?

And you would hear sound coming from this graveyard.

Legend has it Robert Johnson

went down to the crossroads

and gave the devil his guitar and a fried-chicken sandwich.

The devil tuned the guitar and ate the sandwich, saying:

"But your soul would taste a hell of a lot better. Yum yum!"

So Robert Johnson shrugged his shoulders

and handed over his soul.

The devil gave him back his guitar and belched.

Robert Johnson went on to

impressed a lot of folks with his singin'

and playin' during his short life.

Within African American culture,

I think people are leaving out,

they miss a part of it in terms of understanding

where this whole notion of

Robert Johnson going to the crossroads

to sell his soul to the devil.

That is sort of a Christian perspective.

But in African American culture we don't all buy into that

because we know that there is a larger culture related to that

such as understanding the African perspective of that

as that eventually came down to African American culture as well

and that was understanding

the trickster of the god figure Legba

that was part of African culture.

And Legba himself was not the devil

- that's to strong of a term,

but Legba was really a trickster,

that some people can call on.

You said that people should begin to

acknowledge these African presences in our lives.

That is something the culture has largely ignored,

the reason why of course is that there

is a lot of misinformation

regarding African spiritual practices in this country.

It is a motive. We have no proof for any of this.

But I think its worth exploring in terms of understanding

as some would call it this voodoo kind of mystique

around Robert Johnson.

♪ There's a Black Sun rising

♪ Underneath the water

♪ There's a Black Sun rising

♪ Under the bounding mane

♪ Sit in motion by the greed

♪ of Midas

♪ And the arrogance

♪ of Cain

♪ A dark ritual of Moloch

♪ Straight from Bohemenian Grove

♪ The Creamation of Dull Care

♪ And the City they could not hold

♪ Fire on the water

♪ Fire in the air

♪ And below the Black Sun burning

♪ With an evil glare

The thing that always impressed me

about New Orleans,

the thing I really dug, was that it's the city

that gave the rest of the United States its flavor,

its spice.

It is a city reknown for its celebration of life through

its food, music, dance and sex.

It was the city in America that wasn't afraid of the body.

It was the one place in America that didn't outlaw the drum

and permitted black people to dance.

New Orleans is Europe bathing

with Africa in the waters of the Carribean.

And no, I am not a "spiritual tourist" here.

I'm not searching for a path to "enlightenment"

by gawking at the Hindus of India

or the Buddhists of Japan or Tibet.

I am an American in an American city.

I am not looking outside of my culture.

I am traveling along a tributary,

searching for a central spring

that nourishes America in a spiritual way.

Jesus Christ, It's fucking hot. Miss Glasman...

It's great to see you.

How are you?

You traded wonderful New England spring

like weather for this heat, humidity...

Yes, I must have been out of my mind...

You established that long time ago. I need a chair.

I know you need a chair.

And all the chairs are covered in boxes

cause I am moving the shop.

Let's... Let's... here is a chair.

And I'll sit on the box of salt.

That way I am cleansing myself as we speak.

Indeed.

Yes, there you go.

So, what's happening and what you are doing?

Seriously?

Hmhm. Last time you were here

we were initiating people in my temple

in the miserable, unbearable heat

and Edgar, my papa from Haiti was here.

Yes.

And you were making recordings of him

and nobody was speaking each others language

but everybody understood everything.

Yeah, that's true. I wanted to get to that a little later.

Okay.

Cause actually since that time

a couple of questions occurred to me

given the horrific nature of the natural disasters

that hit two of the major voodoo centers in the west.

How? I mean I don't understand how one can...

You look fabulous...

Happy Easter.

Okay, natural disasters.

In the face of two horrific disasters

of monstrous proportions

that some might say are acts of god.

How do you retain your faith in a religion

that's disparaged by the society we live in.

I have so many things to say about this.

I was sure you did.

I'll try to be succinct.

First of all, when I hear

disasters of monstrous proportions

and than I think these are at least natural,

these are mother earth rising up

and when I think about the proportion

of the disaster that was slavery,

that was the supposedly founding of this country

and the discovery of the New World,

I think at least there is

something aligned and that Haiti,

like New Orleans has somehow become the conscience keeper

for the western world and the violence

that was done upon humanity at those times and

in the same way that people say to me that

possession trance is this terrifying demonic thing

and I think instead that it's exactly the opposite

- our ego identities having such control

and such a lock hold on us is really scary

and that possession trance

where you get to go beyond those boundaries

and become spirit for a while...

I see things always at askew and I always been that way.

I mean from the time I was first born

I see things backwards, I do things backwards and

New Orleans is very much that way...

everything is backwards and upside down.

Haiti - everything is backwards and upside down.

When I was initiating myself in Haiti,

all through the initiation which went on for a week,

houngans, priests and mambos, priestesses

came into the chamber that I was in and they would all say:

Don't think that this will make your life any easier, it's not.

If anything it gonna make it harder

because you are basically upside down

and backwards compared to the rest of the world and so what,

you have entrée into the invisible,

it's gonna make it hard for you

in the physical mundane material world.

Don't think it's gonna make anything easier for you.

But what it does do it tells you at what level

and to what degree you can engage in your own life

and your own experience and how we respond to spirit is

whether we gonna survive this or not.

So I don't think that Haiti or New Orleans is unique.

I don't think we're being punished by anybody,

Voodoo is not about judging good and bad,

so that whole premise that this is great evil

and god is going to punish

doesn't make any sense in the context of voodoo

but what does matter is balance

and consciously creating a balance in your life,

in your well being, in your community,

in how you address spirit

and no wonder all these amazing people

are collecting in New Orleans

and creating a front line and preserving what is unique.

You talk about going beneath the surface.

The waters of the invisible.

What do you mean when you say that?

In the voodoo world view we could say

and actually the way I perceive and always have perceived,

there is a surface level in the world.

That's the physical, that's the visible.

And there is also simultaneously within,

beyond,throughout,

around all of the physical

- there is an invisible ocean of spirit.

By spirit I mean basically intelligent energy

and this intelligent energy to me

radiates from the presence of the divine.

And spirit is in everything.

It is literally the water that we bath in,

the earth that we walk upon, the air that we breathe.

The entire world is enrolled with spirit

and is contained within god's life force.

And these two worlds interact and interpenetrate each other.

They reveal things about one another

and they affect one another and we can say that they...

The visible world is influenced by the invisible world

in ways that are invisible.

So we think of them as magic.

They appear to us

on the physical side of things as magic.

To me they are just mere images

that the physical world is a mirror of the invisible world.

And so we can act in ways in the physical

that will effect the invisible world, too.

We can open the doors between these two realms

and invite them to dance.

a Legba qui garde la porte

a Legba qui garde la porte

au tambour

de l'homme à l'homme dans le Ashè

I didn't really understand the

deeper meanings of friendship until I met Sallie.

We met in high school.

She had recently lost her mother.

I had lost my own the year before.

It's a loss I've never really recovered from, either.

It remains the most painful experience of my life.

The world fell from beneath my feet and

I tumbled into infinite darkness.

Sallie was the one person then who understood those feelings.

We formed a bond of empathetic intensity.

La famille de ma mère, la famille de mon père

Nous dansons ici et en Guinèe on danse

When you are dancing in the ceremony

and the drums are beating and there is lots of vibration

and frequency happening.

Every colour you see, every gesture that there is,

every song, every beat is focusing the mind

in a particular way

and accentuating a particular vibration,

a particular frequency.

And it allows ordinary, everyday people

in the ordinary,everyday world to suddenly

break through that ordinary world into

this realm of spirit and become spirit.

It is interesting you described

the spirit as like intelligent energy

as opposed to these personified forces of nature.

Through our interaction with them

we start to perceive beyond our own boundaries

and what happens in possession trance

is not that you are being shut out or shut down

and being taken over by some force out there.

Instead you just going past

what you think of as your limitations.

Cigar!

What goes on here is that my family is together again.

I didn t grow up here but I've been here long

and I been here seven years living.

And I'm really interested in African spirituality

as it is practiced in Africa and was historically.

What I found out is that it works

and that is why the why the French lost their colonies

because they thought it was entertainment,

but it was really working.

So I come here to take part in African spirituality,

connect with my ancestors directly

and it's really nice because I go to another church

which is a catholic church and the people on the walls,

on the murals they don't look like me,

they look like somebody else

and some of like my great grandmother,

but they don't look like me.

So when I come here I see representations of spirits

that look like me and that is easier to connect with.

The ceremony was generous in more than one way.

It gave me the gift of a new friend

in the person of Hassan Sekou Allen?

a charming man with an incredible breath of knowledge

concerning New Orleans' complex history

and its ongoing parade of surprises.

He is very much an ambassador of New Orleans magic,

even if he is actually from L.A.

I am really interested in knowing

how the voodoo that bloomed here in New Orleans

contributed to the evolution of the different musical genres

that came out of that city. Can you give me some insight.

Okay, you know that fundamentally African music

is a rhythmic music,

it's polyrhythmic whereas European music is,

we speak of polyphonic music,

more than one phonic going on at a time.

Well, here it is more than one rhythm going on at a time.

Polyrhythmic democracy,

this democracy of rhythm which is intrinsic

not only to African ritualistic music

but also to social music.

And these rhythms being brought across

I mean really fundamental

to what becomes every strain of popular music down to today.

The rhythm of for example the bambola rhythm.

Well, you can hear that all the way down

to the washboard players on royal street this afternoon

or the lady that we met at Sallie Anns place on Sunday

also for a minute tapped into that rhythm.

You know just naturally, never having drummed before

she did that bambola rhythm, isn't that very interesting?

You know and there are other fundamental rhythms

like what we call the key.

In Afro-Yoruba percussion it is the clave,

so it is a rhythmic pattern which I learned is two ways:

hair cut shave shampoo and shave hair cut shampoo.

Depending on the determination of the phrase.

Well that rhythm we know

travels through many different variations.

Bizets Habanera from Carmen is one variation of it

or the second line beat of the famous New Orleans bab bab bab..

That is also one variation of that

one,two,three, one,two,three, one, two,

That is an important aspect of the music.

I remember reading about this man who would sharpen

and would go through New Orleans neighbourhood

and sharpen like knifes things

like that who apparently carry the same rhythms

- a vegetable seller, the ice man.

But even down to the second line marches

you go to a Mardi Gras parade, there are 47 crews in row,

most of them use - highschool,

junior highschool, elementary school -

bands from the area

and one of the big things is

that these bands have to have a drum cadence

that is distinctly their own

and if you don't hear bits of Africa, Haiti and Brazil

through all of that and Cuba,

you aren't listening because it's out there

and it's happening on the streets every day in this city.

I've known David Goat Carson since

my boho days in a now-vanished New York.

David is a novelist and songwriter.

He studied with the blues legend Skip James

and shares a Grammy with musical collaborator Dr. John.

It wasn't until after he left

New York for New Orleans, however,

I learned he was a respected shaman

of the White Buffalo tribe.

You see, this is the most sacred spot for me.

This is the oldest tree in New Orleans.

This tree is obviously over a thousand years old which means

it was a baby when the crusaders marched

into Jerusalem.

And you see the roots are as big as the trunk of the trees

and every time I have something

to do that's I feel life changing

this is where I come to pray.

Look at this, what a comfortable chair.

I was actually interested in how Native American practice

merged with African spirituality

that's been a repeating theme in many of the people

I've talked to all over this trip.

Here is the story as it has come to me.

When they moved the slaves here,

when they moved the Africans their gods became like them.

Powerful gods like Legba would suddenly be a cripple,

a drunkard, living in rags.

But what happened is that when they came here,

two peoples with a very similar understanding of the earth,

the relationship with the planet,

the relationship with trees, everything

and they were both being oppressed by the same guy.

So they came together

and they did this in the hills and mountains of Haiti.

The natives there, that Columbus hadn't killed

had run off to the mountains.

So the Africans would do their religion

which was a devil worship

according to the catholic church.

They would go up in the woods

and when they was in the woods,

they ran into the Native Americans.

And they got together,

they began to Powwow,

Powwow originally meant healing ceremony.

That's what Powwow means.

And they came together and from this merging,

the Petra, the fire ceremonies, New Orleans voodoo,

Haitian voodoo came about through this blend.

Which is where the Mardi Gras Indian tradition comes from

and I think it is very telling that

the Mardi Gras Indians use the Indian.

Cause they gotta had somebody who fight the Gods of Europe

and so they started talking to the Indians,

and the Indians fell in love with the black people

because they thought they were pretty.

Totally different view, you know,

white folks they found them ugly, stupid,

like monkeys but the Indians thought:

Oh, beautiful, oh, fearless, powerful.

They had no problem in falling in love,

not at all and the thing they had to consider

because the Indians had no slavery.

If you married, if your slave married an Indian woman,

that Indian woman was not your slave,

nor were their children.

They would live on your plantation

and they would help their husband

but they would have their own garden

and they would eventually buy their husbands freedom

and this is where you get this

whole thing of free people of colour.

That's like one of the big New Orleans things,

that's one of the few places in the south

where there were free people of color.

It was the only place in the South

where the Africans were allowed to drum

cause they were afraid of the African drum

because it was to much like the Native American drum.

"They're talking to the Indians, what are they saying?"

And they would freak out.

I am in my Easter Sunday best.

My brother. How is it going?

Guess what... we have got a date this evening...

for the opening of Treme.

What time will it be on? Around 9,9:30?

Something like that.

I don't remember. It's been so long.

They said, my episode was on last Thursday.

I've got royalties from the first Treme episode I shot

That song? The revelator...

The revelator. You heard that.

I gave you a copy

Yeah, I heard a copy of it.

♪ John the Revelator knocked a song to me.

♪ We were given a peek into the future you see.

♪ What we saw words can't explain.

♪ No, we just sending pictures from the astral plane -

♪ visions and riddles - you connect the dots...

Its hot. All I can think about is

air conditioning

and the end of the civil war.

And how the newly freed needed to celebrate.

So they picked up the brass instruments

discarded in the streets

by the military's departing marching bands.

A new music evolved out of the ashes of slavery and war.

This new music was called a lot of things

but eventually it was called Jazz.

Jazz is played for all occassions in New Orleans,

including funerals, especially funerals.

I am just glad to see everybody out here,

because I always knew my father was an icon here in this city

and from the likes of Jimi Hendrix,

you can name it.

If you wanna go on Youtube and look at it,

it's all there about my father, you know.

And my brothers are right here.

I am glad to see them.

Because with our father's legacy

we are all glad to share with everybody.

Right here. Especially for this week of Jazzfest.

The technical name is a traditional funeral

and it comes in two sections:

the first line and the second line.

The second line is the part

that most people are familiar with.

But you need a first line to have a funeral

and in the first line you have the deceased,

the grand marchall, the band,

and some very close members of the family

and the person who will release the spirit.

Once the casket or the urne

or whatever is placed inside the vault

it is the responsibility and the honour of this spouse,

partner, child, husband, whoever is the closest to

the diseased to take their index finger

and make a gesture just like this.

And when they do that

they have cut through an imaginary tether

which has bound that soul to earth.

When that occurs, generally those people fall out

cause it's so intense.

But once this gesture is made,

that's when the high steppin,

the baton twirlin, the umbrella spinning,

dancing takes place and that's the second line.

The living cuts the teather,

the spirit breaks free and, so too, the music breaks,

reaffirming life, reaffirming freedom.

But it's still too hot.

I love this city, but after two weeks

I'm ready for cooler climes.

I was first introduced to the work of Ishmael Reed

by one of my creative writing instructors in high school.

Mr. Reed has remained an influence in my life ever since.

Slightly more than ten years later,

while trying to establish my own voice as a writer,

I found myself part of a group of writers

and other artists on the Lower Eastside of Manhattan

who had descended from The Umbra Workshop;

an arts collective Mr. Reed had been involved

with in the very early sixties.

During Mr. Reed's frequent visits to New York

I was able to establish a growing friendship with him.

What I love most about Mr. Reed

is his absolutely grotesque yet incisive sense of humor.

For example,

we were discussing Basquiat's fate

at the hands of Andy Warhol.

"It was like Renfield's encounter

with Count Dracula" he said,

"In the end, Warhol had him cowering eating flies."

We've been on the road for quiet a few weeks.

We've absorbed a lot

and we've realized I am just

scratching the surface of my subject.

I think that is the essential element of all of this,

that this is a process that can absorb.

Unlike Protestantism where you are with them

or you are not with them.

If you want a summary, an abstract of African religion,

you can say that it is something

that always was able to incorporate new ideas,

incorporate religions that are hostile to it.

Like Christianity.

I went to a funeral at The Church of God in Christ.

This is a church, a 19th century church,

they keep the African tradition going.

They got the drums, they got the whole thing.

Middle class people, the strivers,

bourgeoise Afro-Americans look down upon them.

In the situation that we are in in this hemisphere,

our religions always had to be one step ahead of the law.

Our cultures always had to be one step ahead of the law.

Always had to improvise.

Improvisation is something that we have used as a tool.

The spiritual force was able to

incorporate elements from other religions and practices.

If you look at Haitian art.

I saw a show in Paris and I saw a show in New York

where people use scraps,

they use scraps to assemble these collages.

Which is what I do in my work.

I mean my work is not influenced

by other writings as much as by the collage.

Because that's what the people I knew in New York were doing.

The painters were doing collages,

the musicians were doing collages,

in the sense that if you listen to John Coltrane,

Miles Davis and all of them

they take bits and snatches from popular tunes.

They were mixing and sampling

before these kids had these machines and everything.

The blues players were doing that also.

Absolutely, so we had to improvise

in order to stay alive.

When we talk about reclaiming a African based religion

and how that religion has informed the identities

of a lot of Afrocentricists for example.

What I find interesting is that the idea

of identity becomes meaningless in the face

of a genuine voodoo experience.

You need an interpretation of religion that is modern.

That doesn't involve a lot of paraphernalia.

I got Eshu (Legba) up there.

But it doesn't involve a lot of paraphernalia and ritual,

and I don't consider myself a follower of any religion.

All these saints require gifts...

Sustenance

I think the mind is like that

and what one does is to feed the mind.

I don't feel religion

can answer complex questions of the universe.

The mind is the house of the spirit unencumbered by

trappings of ritual and dogma.

This is the last thought Ishmael Reed had left me with.

I ponder this as I leave Oakland to explore

how this view might play itself out in contemporary art.

With his gifts of sewing and dance combined

with a sharp eye for found objects,

visual artist Nick Cave has made

a unique contribution to American culture,

clearly influenced by the religious customs

and ritual traditions of West African masquerade.

We spent a day looking at your exhibition in Seattle.

What I would like to know is

how you make the transition from fabric to movement.

You went to an art school

but you also have this interest in dance

and you manages somehow to find a way to combine the two.

What was that process, that growth process?

Well, I went to art school to study art.

And at the same time I studied dance.

So I had these dual majors at the same time

and was interested at some point

in this sort of collaboration of these two disciplines.

I can look at it as a sculptural object

but then I also can think about it as something

that can be brought to the body.

And then how does the body inform that object?

May it be through performance,

may it be through photography,

may it be through a collaborations.

I read an interesting story about

how you came upon the twig sound suit.

You were gone through a period of questioning yourself

or more importantly questioning the idea

what it meant to be a black male in this society

around the time of the Rodney King beating.

You know that horrific incident was very sort of emotional.

Particularly for me as a black male.

To think about the role of racial profiling.

What I was responding to was the sort of readings

and how they brought description to his character.

Larger than life, worked out with prison weights.

Six men me to bring him down, scary.

and just trying to visualize

what that would look like as an image.

And then I created this sort of suit in response

to looking at materials that were discarded.

And then I realized that I saw this as sculpture

and I didn't even think that

I could physically put this thing on.

Then I put it on and then I was thinking:

am I making a sort of second skin?

A suit of armor?

Something to protect my spirit.

And then I started to think about, you know,

the role of a Persona and hidden identity

and the fact that the sound suits hide

gender, race, class and so

you are forced to reckon

with something without judgement.

It made me think about myself as an artist differently.

That there is something more behind this than I realized.

My exploits may have taught me a few things

but the Hoodoo road is still a lonely place.

So it was good to be back in New York

with my gumbo of friends;

who, by the way, were celebrating my return

by preparing a pot of gumbo.

Do we have all the celery and everything together?

Who first taught you how to do Gambo?

My mother.

And she learned it from...

..a book...

A year a ago I called all my friends

and I asked for their gumbo recipe and I mixed them...

I mixed them all together.

So we are using her roux and her fond

but the sauteeing of the shells

comes from a friend in Mississippi

and the use of okra

is the staple of my aunt and my cousins.

You use fishheads in yours?

I use fishheads, shrimp shells,

and vegetables for the fond and I cook it over night...

Here's the folklore: when I went to Togo several years ago.

I wanted to get okra stew, right?

In Ghana, okra stew is like a really important dish.

Obviously, Ghana is anglophone and Togo is francophone,

so I was having a hard time.

No one knew what I meant when I said okra.

Like: okra! Like: okra stew!

And they were like, oh, Gambo!

Ca c'est gambo en francaise.

So I found out then

that the word for okra in francophone West Africa,

in the Dahomé region, is gambo.

And basically that's how Gumbo became Gumbo

in the Louisiana basin, in that area,

because the principle ingredient was okra.

But then there was the Native American

influence with the sassafras.

That's what I came about.

And I was just curious.

The reason why I brought that up

was that I was just curious

if the two of you had the okra/gumbo argument...

We just had an argument about how to make Gumbo,

because I asked her if I'm partially using her recipe

and she said:

"No, I don't make it like that" and I am just like:

"What's Gumbo without ocra?".

I mean: Gumbo IS okra!

So I understand that

you want to deny a whole line of tradition

where there's a lot of people who make gumbo not with okra.

And that's okay?

But Gumbo is okra and it wouldn't be called Gumbo

when it didn't have okra in it...

That's okay... there is lots of kinds of Gumbo.

I agree.

Would you like to way in on this discussion.

We always use okra.

I think the idea of Gumbo, the metaphor,

is that it's a stew that combines

a lot of different cultural elements and blends them.

Absolutely.

Okay.

And your technique can be drawn from a lot of different regions.

I think that's the point of Gumbo.

What I understand is that okra wasn't native to this area

and it was brought over in the hair of the enslaved women.

That's the folklore.

It would be interesting to be really like research.

Yeah, to do the research...

I'm not playing on this dinner party.

I just want to get something to eat.

Why didn't you just put that in this.

Cause it was too hot to handle.

But you can handle me, can't you?

- Diverse Voices -

That was amazing.

Tell me what you think of the magazine...

Yes Baby.

I see you all on facebook...

Please somewhere else!

I'm free.

That's why you've got to make me

the mixtape with the free songs. I'm free...

Allright, got you...

I know I've only scratched the surface

of what I what I've been looking for.

But the one thing I learned

standing among the tombs of New Orleans is,

that the spirits of the dead must be

set free to do their work

in order for the living to continue their own.

Its no wonder my home feels like a mausoleum.

I know now what I must do.

Glinda looms large, drizzling a rain of star dust.

I can hear the beat of her electronic drum.

I click my ruby heels.

♪ Hey my man,

♪ You know, who's cooking up that jive,

♪ selling it to these folks 'round town,

♪ makin 'em have them funny dreams.

♪ Well, you ve got them.

♪ That s right.

♪ Somebody done hoodoo'd the hoodoo man

♪ Ol' Joe Hannah from Lousiana,

♪ A hoodoo king in every manner

♪ But I found out without a doubt,

♪ The tables had turned on him

♪ He ain't got a tooth in his head,

♪ Poor Ol' Joe is almost dead

♪ Somebody done hoodoo'd the hoodoo man

♪ 10, 10, double 10, 45, 15,

♪ Joe cant drink no gin

♪ And nothing goes over the devil's back

♪ that don't buckle under his chin

♪ His face looks just like gravel sand

♪ And everybody's got Joe on the pan

♪ Somebody done hoodoo'd the hoodoo man

♪ shabada, duu, bab

♪ shabada, dii, da da da

♪ shabada, bii, bii, du

♪ shaba, dup, di, di, da...

♪ shaba, dup, di, di, di...

♪ da, da, dab, ba, dap, oh, ip, pi...

♪ Oh man, you re making me hungry

♪ Somebody done cooked up some stuff in a pot,

♪ Not too cold and not to hot

♪ They put a few drops in Joe's beef stew

♪ Now he's blowing his top, he don't know what to do

♪ They don't know who did it

♪ They can't find out

♪ But he's done hoodoo'd his last hoodoo without a doubt

♪ Somebody done hoodoo'd -

♪ Done hoodoo'd the hoodoo man.