{"id":874,"date":"2019-05-31T17:22:43","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T15:22:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.convivialthinking.org\/?p=874"},"modified":"2019-05-31T17:23:29","modified_gmt":"2019-05-31T15:23:29","slug":"creation-song-a-revelation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/2019\/05\/31\/creation-song-a-revelation\/","title":{"rendered":"Creation Song: A Revelation"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Budd Hall<\/em><\/p>\n

Our cries of fear and pain<\/p>\n

Our cries of joy of happiness<\/p>\n

Were our first poems<\/p>\n

Before words<\/p>\n

Before sentences<\/p>\n

Before grammar<\/p>\n

Before language<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We imitated birds and other animals<\/p>\n

And found that with our sounds we could share<\/p>\n

Our experience and tell a story<\/p>\n

With each other<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our first sounds\/poems<\/p>\n

Creating community through<\/p>\n

A common sense of who we were<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We put our sounds together<\/p>\n

We repeated them to each other<\/p>\n

We created memory through sounds<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We changed the pitch in our voices<\/p>\n

We changed the rhythm in our delivery<\/p>\n

And we had song<\/p>\n

And we had story<\/p>\n

And each of us was a poet<\/p>\n

A story teller<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our poems were of the earth and the water<\/p>\n

Of the rocks, the trees, the other animals, the grasses<\/p>\n

And at night with full moon\u2019s light, we shared our stories<\/p>\n

The Old, talking to the young<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And when we died<\/p>\n

The poems remained<\/p>\n

The stories remained<\/p>\n

Our words<\/p>\n

Our language<\/p>\n

They reminded us of who we were<\/p>\n

Where we were going<\/p>\n

Where we had been<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our poems and songs became our culture<\/p>\n

We gave birth to these poems and songs<\/p>\n

And in return, the songs and poems gave<\/p>\n

Life to us in families, communities, and kingdoms<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

With our stories we existed<\/p>\n

Without our stories<\/p>\n

Without our words<\/p>\n

We were not alive<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The world was therefore sounded, cried and spoken<\/p>\n

Into being<\/p>\n

Our lives were sung into existence<\/p>\n

And over the thousands of years<\/p>\n

As we drifted and filled the earth with people<\/p>\n

Our languages gave us our identity<\/p>\n

Who we were, and importantly<\/p>\n

Who we were not<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We were the people of the large mountain<\/p>\n

We were the people of the standing stone<\/p>\n

We were the people of the large salmon river<\/p>\n

We were the people of the broad savannah<\/p>\n

We were the people of the Nile Valley<\/p>\n

We shared stories of 20,000 years and more<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And although through time our words and languages<\/p>\n

Have come to be distinct<\/p>\n

The first purpose of language has always been to foster community<\/p>\n

Not to drive us apart<\/p>\n

And never to use language to say that some ideas and some people<\/p>\n

Are more important than others<\/p>\n

And not to say that one language alone can be a global language<\/p>\n

While other languages are good only for small ideas<\/p>\n

Ideas of the village<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Who am I then?<\/p>\n

Who am I to come to Busoga<\/p>\n

To come to Uganda<\/p>\n

To come to Africa<\/p>\n

And share words in the same language<\/p>\n

Of those people who<\/p>\n

Bring death into our world?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Who am I, someone so far removed from his<\/p>\n

Own tribal origins to have forgotten whatever language<\/p>\n

His ancestors once spoke?<\/p>\n

Who am I, to have been the great grand child of English settlers<\/p>\n

Who took the land of the Halalt First Nations people<\/p>\n

On Vancouver Island<\/p>\n

So that their English-speaking children might<\/p>\n

Have more food and better houses and better medical care than<\/p>\n

The Halalt-language speaking children whose land they took?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What is the meaning of my coming to this land, this Africa where<\/p>\n

All human life began?<\/p>\n

I am made humble by the presence of so many gods and Ancestors<\/p>\n

Among us here today<\/p>\n

I am lost at this moment and have no real answers for myself<\/p>\n

Let alone for any others hearing me today or reading these words<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I know only one thing<\/p>\n

That our words, our languages, our differences, our dreams and our<\/p>\n

Ferocious anger at injustice and poverty and cruelty<\/p>\n

Must be shared<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And I know one more thing<\/p>\n

That the feeling of the soil on the soles of our feet<\/p>\n

Or of our hand dipping into our rivers or our seas<\/p>\n

Or of the sounds of birds at sunrise<\/p>\n

Or of the cries of newly born children and other animals<\/p>\n

Or of the sounds of drums and xylophones<\/p>\n

Or of the singing together in celebration that hope still exists<\/p>\n

Or of the memories kept alive in our Mother Tongue<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Are carried in our words<\/p>\n

With our poetry<\/p>\n

With our songs<\/p>\n

Words and songs born of African soil<\/p>\n

And carried in our hearts to every corner of this planet<\/p>\n

Still carrying life<\/p>\n

Still rejecting despair<\/p>\n

Still making resistance possible<\/p>\n

Still conveying tenderness<\/p>\n

Still linking friend to friend<\/p>\n

Still expressing our love<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Budd L. Hall<\/a> dedicated this Revelation to Nabyama Paulo Wangoola for opening him so many possibilities to learn.<\/em><\/p>\n

This was shared for the first time at the Mpambo Multiversity campus in Isegero, Iganga, Busoga, Uganda after Jajjaj Kiwanuka Ntambi-za-Mukama, a Professor of Afrikan spirituality, said that he had been told by the spirits that someone in the room had a revelation to share.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Budd Hall Our cries of fear and pain Our cries of joy of happiness Were our first poems Before words Before sentences Before grammar Before language<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[29,24,17],"class_list":["post-874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-speaking","tag-pluriversality","tag-poetry","tag-positionality"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t