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Flying Africans

Drums and Shadows

Muh gran say ole man Waldburg down on St. Catherine own some slabes wut wuzn climatize an he wuk um hahd an one day dey wuz hoein in duh fiel an duh dribuh come out an two ub um wuz unuh a tree in duh shade, an duh hoes wuz wukin by demsef. Duh dribuh say 'Wut dis?' an dey say, 'Kum buba yali kuni buba tambe, Kum kunka yali kum kunka tambe,' quick like. Den dey rise off duh groun an fly away. Nobody ebuh see um no mo. Some say dey fly back tuh Africa. Muh gran see dat wid he own eye.

I think the myths are misunderstood now because we are not talking to each other the way I was spoken to when I was growing up in a very small town. You knew everything in that little microcosm. But we don’t live where we were born. (…) So the myths get forgotten. Or they may not have been looked at carefully. Let me give you an example: the flying myth in Song of Solomon. If it means Icarus to some readers, fine; I want to take credit for that. But my meaning is specific: it is about black people who could fly. That was always part of the folklore of my life; flying was one of our gifts. I don’t care how silly it may seem. It is everywhere—people used to talk about it, it’s in the spirituals and gospels.

My gran say, old man Waldburg down on St. Catherine own some slaves that wasn’t climatise, and he work them hard, and one day they was horsing in the field, and the driver come out, and two of them was under a tree in the shade, and the horse was walking by themselve. The driver say “What this?”, and they say “'Kum buba yali kuni buba tambe, Kum kunka yali kum kunka tambe” quick like. , they rise off the ground and fly away. Nobody ever see them no more. Some say they fly back to Africa. My gran see that with her own eye.”

The flying African folktale probably has its historical roots in an 1803 collective suicide by newly imported slaves.

I think the myths are misunderstood now because we are not talking to each other the way I was spoken to when I was growing up in a very small town. You knew everything in that little microcosm. But we don’t live where we were born. (…) So the myths get forgotten. Or they may not have been looked at carefully. Let me give you an example: the flying myth in Song of Solomon. If it means Icarus to some readers, fine; I want to take credit for that. But my meaning is specific: it is about black people who could fly. That was always part of the folklore of my life; flying was one of our gifts. I don’t care how silly it may seem. It is everywhere—people used to talk about it, it’s in the spirituals and gospels.

However, homecoming is a phenomenon with a long history. It has it's roots in the myths of the “flying Africans” who were said to return home after death in bondage, and it found an expression in the first attempts of freed slaves to resettle on the African continent.

One unfortunate result of the sloppiness of literary critics and anthropologists and others claiming almost any narrative as a “myth” is that folklorists cannot trust the titles of books and articles allegedly concerned with the subject of myth.

although studied by numerous scholars in relevant disciplines, from anthropology to literary criticism, an agreement about “what the term ‘myth’ means has never been achieved within any of these fields, let alone among them”. As none of its features can be isolated as the “essential one”, and no simple definition can cover all aspects of its nature, the only way to comprehend it is take into consideration all of its important traits, shedding light on it from various angles simultaneously.

It would work to make the traditional linguistic sophistication of Comparative Literature supplement Area Studies (and history, anthropology, political theory, and sociology) by approaching the language of the other not only as a “field” language.

The mythology in the books can provide what the Other culture did. It provides a transition, a way to see what in fact the dangers are, what are the havens, and what is the shelter. That is true for everybody, but for people who have been culturally parochial for a long time, the novel is the transition. The novel has to provide the richness of the past as well as the suggestions of what the use of it is.

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