Jah lives! In far north Queensland …

MaameJ in her own design (tussah silk), 1985. Got that, it was the 80s!

Or he did when I was there in 1985. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was adventuring around Australia that year when I re-discovered African music while waitressing at Fitzroy Island. I lived in the Cairns area – mostly in tourist village Kuranda - for 8 months. I waitressed, bummed around, learned yoga, swam at the Barron River Gorge, tried to sell some weird clothes I’d designed at the Kuranda market, got involved with the campaigns of the local feminist group, travelled to Cape York in a Holden Kingswood. Ah yes, the 80s …

Actually the Kingswood didn’t get us right to the top, it conked out in Weipa and we flew back to Cairns. Another story.

So how did Jah fit into all this? Well FNQ attracted interesting kinds of people in those days. Probably still does, if you exclude the trillions of ravaging tourists from your assessment of the population. So it kind of makes sense that it was in Kuranda that I met the person who introduced me to more African music.

Ibina was a white rastafarian whose parents were building her a house on a rainforest block in Kuranda. I camped in her backyard on my days off from the island, with our mutual friend Breatharian. (I call her that because she was aspiring to live solely on air. Hmm. I think that ambition was stymied by her closet chocolate bar addiction). 

Ibina was a retired dancer who had lived in Jamaica and danced in the US before coming back to Oz with her half-Jamaican son, JahLion. (Omigod, he must be nearly 40 by now!!) Ibina had dreds she could almost sit on and started each day with a fat spliff. She’d changed her anglo name to reflect Rasta beliefs and cooked a yummy vegetarian ital stew with sweet potatos and pigeon peas from a tree in her backyard. Here’s another recipe for it. So yes, Jah lived in far north Queensland.

Ibina inspired both Breatharian and I to learn dance. She was classically trained but her passion was Afro-style contemporary. She choreographed a special piece for the three of us to perform at the Kuranda festival that September. We practised on the spacious verandah of her half-finished house – surrounded on 3 sides by thick foliage. We danced to a Peter Tosh song: Rastafari Is.

Ibina on the left, Breatharian on the right, I'm the skinny one in the middle who's lost her balance.

Wow, almost brings tears to my eyes hearing it again. I can remember the first bit by heart. I can even remember the first few steps. The first bit was choreographed and when it moves into a long instrumental, we got to improvise for a while. It’s a long piece of music and about half way through Tosh stops singing and starts preaching, so Ibina very wisely only used about the first five minutes, then Peter Tosh faded out and Thomas Mapfumo faded in.

Thomas Mapfumo is another of those “master” African musicians – in this case a master of the mbira, or thumb piano. He’s not one of my favourites but this is a lovely piece of music. When I first heard it, it was another one of those gobsmacked moments where I’d never before heard anything like it. At the time, I had no idea who it was – it was just a track on some tape and Ibina didn’t know anything about it except that she liked it.

Breatharian and I didn’t get to dance to this, at least not in public. Ibina used it for her solo with a bunch of local toddlers pretending to be a rainstorm. You can hear the rain in the music, that’s the mbira. Breatharian and I reclined and admired her from the back of the stage, if I remember right.

Lulu's premiere public performance at Kuranda festival. Sorry it's so fuzzy.

The Kuranda festival was the climax of my stay in FNQ. A couple of friends from Sydney even came up for it. One of them, Lulu, had recently learned belly dancing and I will never forget seeing her dance for the first time. On Ibina’s rainforest verandah, in a deep blue skirt, the only light a candle. It was magic. Later, at the festival, Lulu discovered some Aboriginal women selling grass skirts and decided on the spot to buy one. She spent the afternoon sewing shells onto a brown singlet, then undulated to an enthusiastic crowd.

After the festival, Breatharian and I lost little time in fulfilling another dream, also inspired by Ibina: we hitch-hiked from Cairns to Adelaide, via Alice Springs and Uluru, to see the Alvin Ailey dance company perform. I’m not sure if Ibina had ever danced with them – her not actually being black, & all – but she certainly knew them, had gone to classes with them, was influenced by their style, and her passion was so infectious we put our crazy lives at risk to go and see them.

I’m embarrassed to admit that when we finally got there, it felt like a bit of an anti-climax, but then, we were exhausted. I’ve never really enjoyed seeing dance in huge theatres – I prefer small & intimate where you can see the sweat. And the facial expressions. Like at the Laura Dance festival. I don’t know what it’s like now, but when Breatharian and I went there a couple of months before Alvin Ailey, it was heart-stoppingly wonderful. I guess those vibrant, gutsy and dusty performances were a hard act for anyone to follow.

After Adelaide we took a train to Melbourne, Breatharian’s home town. From there I went to visit friends in Tassie, then I came back to Sydney to live, and Breatharian went to work in Weipa. I’m terrible at writing letters so I lost contact with both Breatharian and Ibina. I may never know if Breatharian fulfilled her goal of walking to Africa in a white robe, let alone whether she achieved breatharianism. I don’t know if Ibina’s even alive – she must be in her 70s by now if she is. When I went to Kuranda a few years ago I couldn’t even remember exactly where her house was, everything is so overgrown. Ah well. Those were the days.

Food shock

AM, Owure and 50 Cedis enjoy burgers, chips and Bombe Alaska (!) at the Rexmer Hotel in Kumasi.

It’s school holidays and AM is eating my money. Movies, gaming cafes, junk food, pearl milk tea. Perhaps I should just not give him any money other than pocket money, but I’d rather he went out and had fun than moped around all day in front of the computer. Whatever, he’s going to have to get a job soon, I can’t afford him.

A few days ago he went out with a friend who’s just come back from a trip to grandparents in Ireland and Germany, who was complaining about how much he’d had to eat at his German Grandma’s table. It prompted AM to commiserate and recount his own overseas food trauma. He blamed his tendency to over-eat on our trip to Ghana. Personally, I just think it’s because he’s a child of extremes in everything, but his analysis is that he missed Aussie food so much  that now he’s got unlimited access to it, he’s so relieved that he can’t stop when he should. 

AM told his friend how in Ghana he’d had nothing to eat for weeks on end but rice with a bit of chilli and tomato stew. He missed out on the part of that story where he’d refused point-blank to eat anything else for the last couple of months of our stay. (Unless we went to a ‘European’ hotel , when he’d plow through burgers, chips, steak and pasta). Peanut soup, fried chicken, fresh fish stew with palm oil, all these and more were on offer, but no … now that’s what I call cutting off your nose to spite your face.

However, although it was frustrating to watch, I do understand how he was feeling. (He probably doesn’t think so). I remember feeling the same way at school camp, where at a similar age to him I ate nothing but peanut butter sandwiches for a week and then totally binged when I got home. I also went through much the same experience on my first trip to Ghana. I was only there for four weeks but it was probably only a matter of days before I was craving a simple ham sandwich or a salad – anything but spicy, oily, weird Ghanaian food! At that time (early 90s), it was impossible to find either ham or salad, at least in Kumasi, and I suspect it would still be difficult to find what I think of as good ham, although I hear you can get a decent salad in Accra these days. My saviour was the Chinese restaurant in Kumasi (tender beef! broccoli!), but it was expensive and I couldn’t eat there much.

I tried making my own salad, but it was a dismal, almost inedible disappointment. The lettuce,  carrot and capsicum were bitter and the cucumber turned out to be zucchini (yuk). The tomato was ok but the dressing was awful.

After that, I gave up on substitutes for ‘European’ food and I have never, since, sought it out in Ghana. It’s never teh same as what you’ve grown up on. I’m sure that’s the expereince of expatriates everywhere. My approach these days is to appreciate what’s available rather than mourn for what’s not. However on that first trip it was awful because I got to a point where I just didn’t want to eat anything at all. It was unfamiliar, it was too hot and too heavy, and to make things worse I had a bad stomach bug. I guess that’s the same place AM was in, but for longer than I had to endure it, poor kid. I hope it hasn’t totally put him off.

The next time I went to Ghana I was lucky enough to be staying with my sister-in-law Serwaa, who is a very good cook. Between us, we soon figured out my favourite Ghanaian foods and I survived more than a month in the village, with absolutely no access to any foreign foods (except tinned milk, blech). I still lost weight, due to more or less chronic diarrhoea, but on the whole I was well fed and satisfied. And on our recent trip, I mostly had a wonderful time eating. I just avoided offal and it was all good. So I guess, even tho it had been ten years since the last visit, I’d acclimatised. Just hope AM gets to do the same.

The love story continues

For those who haven’t read my previous post on this topic, I’m referring to my love affair with African dance. I realise ‘African’ is a massive umbrella term so I’ll be more specific. The styles I’m in love with, and know the most about, are mainly West and Central African.

I left off in the last post implying that between 15 and 25 my life was a barren wasteland because I had no contact with African music. Strictly speaking this may not be true. I certainly was hearing a lot of reggae and two-tone, and it was the late 70s, early 80s, so it seems likely that I can across at least Fela Kuti. I can’t really remember. This is possibly because for several years I had quite a lot to do with certain recreational substances that affect memory, but I think that probably I really didn’t hear anything that grabbed me in the way the drum beat did when I was 15.

I did keep dancing during this time. I did classes and the odd performance with fringe dance & theatre groups. In one of them I even got to wear an extraordinarily uncomfortable, tower-like illuminated bird-headdress and slide down banisters on the outside of the Sydeny Opera House. In another I had to portray deep emotion whilst reciting a love poem. It wasn’t difficult, the object of my on-stage desire had his fly undone. It’s amazing how barely controlled hysterical laughter can come across as deep passion. So yes, when I say odd ….

I had friends who were volunteer DJs at the independent radio station Skid Row. Thanks to them I discovered all different kinds of music, including one of my all time favourites, Nigerian Master Guitarist King Sunny Ade. The first time I heard Sunny Ade I was mopping the dining room floor in a resort at Fitzroy Island, offshore from Cairns. This is because I was on an adventure around Australia and working for a few weeks as a waitress.  The dining room was the only place on the island that had a cassette player, and a friend of mine had sent me of two cassette compilations of her own selection, which included tracks from a diverse bunch of musicians: various Sydney indie bands, Gil Scott Heron, Astrud Gilberto, and two tracks from Sunny Ade.  Once again, I had never heard anything like it. And that’s why I figured it must be African. Even though it was far different to my previous experience of African music, no other explanation fitted. Turned out I was right, though I had to wait six months until I got back to Sydney to ask my friend.  This is one of the tracks I heard:

This is the other one. I think of it as an anthem to all those men in nightclubs who want your number within 3 minutes of meeting you. Actually if Sunny Ade had been one of those men I may just have given it to him. Anyway …. one of the reasons I love his music is because he does things with a guitar that I didn’t know were possible. Subtle, complex, flowing, you want it to go on forever and it feels like it will. Wow. After growing up on a diet of strumming, this track was a revelation to me. Amazing things can be done if you put an African musician together with a few strings.

I was pleased to find out that he is still going strong & even performed in the US as recently as June. But why doesn’t he come to Australia!?!? I will tell you my theory about Australia and African musicians in my next post.

Re-connecting with a lost love

Sorry if I disappoint, but this post is not about my romantic past. It is about another kind of passion: dance. I have recently resumed Senegalese dance classes with the Kai Fech group. I haven’t done dance classes for about 20 years, so like reconnecting with other kinds of lost love,  it’s a challenge. But a joyful one.

I have been passionate about dance ever since I can remember, since the long ago days when I twirled around our lounge room to my Dad’s records of Swan Lake and Saint Saens March of the Animals. Living in a small country town it was hard to find dance classes but I made do with whatever short term classes became available: Ballet, Scottish Country and Highland dance, even Jazz one year.  But the most exciting dance discovery of my teens was when an enlightened – or possibly hippy, but at any rate very cool – teacher introduced my PE class to the truly astonishing beat of African drummers.

Looking back, I suspect it was the music of Nigerian master drummer Babatunde Olatunji. Or something quite similar. It doesn’t really matter who it was, it was the music – and the dance style – I had been waiting for all my life.

For a few short and blissful weeks, that teacher had us all stomping around the school oval to complex, powerful rythms. It made a welcome change from netball, I can tell you. I’m not sure how authentic the style was, but my dim recollection is that it was earthy, dynamic and rythmic. These are all qualities I’ve since learned are characteristic of African dance, so she must have had some idea of what she was doing.

Those PE classes were the first time in my life I had contact with any remotely genuine African culture. All I knew of Africa at age 15 was what I’d learned in social studies classes about tribes that ate only blood and milk, wildlife documentaries of course and possibly a bit about early hominid fossils (thanks to Dad’s armchair interest in archaeology). All a bit exotic really. Well, so was the music and dance. But it also felt much more real. I connected to it intensely, physically. But after our PE classes moved on (or back) to more conventional activities, I didn’t hear or dance to African music again for a good ten years more. Sob. I missed it. I didn’t know where to find it. At long last, it found me. More on that in a future post.

If it hadn’t been for that deep sense of connection I have felt to African music and dance, my life would be totally different today. I probably would never have met my son’s father. I wouldn’t now have our gorgeous boy, or all of our wonderful extended Ghanaian family. I probably would never have travelled to Africa. My comfort zone may never have stretched very far. I don’t know if I’d have the same passion to end racism, or the same commitment to figuring out, and helping others figure out, how to build and strengthen cross-cultural relationships. Well, maybe I would. My passion for social justice isn’t necessarily connected to my desire to dance. And I probably would still have had a great life. But I’m really glad I had this one!