| Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. ―Albert Einstein |
I’ve been working my way through the book Steppin’ on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance by Jacqui Malone, and find it a profoundly interesting and eye-opening read. Malone traces the meaning of dance in African American life and culture, along with that culture’s potent and ubiquitous influence throughout American history.
The book opens with the revelation that “In many African languages there is no word to define music. Its pervasiveness in the lives of sub-Saharan Africans makes the use of the term superfluous.” Malone continues, “Among the Fajulu, even the origin of humankind is inextricably linked with dance and music. They believe that in the beginning there were two worlds and the people of both used drum messages to invite one another to dance parties.” What a brilliant origin myth!
I can relate to the idea of music being inseparable from life. In the scientific realm, NOVA reports that “In the atomic world, everything is vibrating” and “All that vibration plays a specific tune.” Zoomed in, we, and our universe, consist of naught but vibrations, rhythms. Albert Einstein said: “I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.” Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was a “musical thought,” he said, that came to him intuitively.
When I spontaneously sing to my cat on a joyful morning, listen to a playlist for comfort and grounding on particularly chaotic days, and hear music that literally moves me to dance, I feel how elemental music is. It seems magical that a Fajulu person might be confused by someone who couldn’t conceive that they were subsumed in the music of life.
See opportunities to fully immerse yourself in music and dance at the Dance Calendar.
See you on the dance floor —Sean Donovan