As an African American, a musician and a poet, I have, of course, been influenced by the spirituals – it would be an exercise in denial to think that I had not. Like many African Americans, the Black Church was an enormous part of my upbringing and was predominant in shaping my definition of community. It was in the church that I first heard the spirituals. Today, when I sing a spiritual, whether it is in the "church style," the "concert style," or alone in my room (I tend to think of this as "the slave style"), I am visited with an extraordinary combination of sadness, resolution, healing, and determination – the emotional impact is undeniable.
Also in my childhood Sasa is the undeniable influence of poetry. I have clear and precious memories of my mother pulling me onto her lap, crooning "Little brown baby wif sparklin' eyes, come to your mama and set on her knee." Many years later when I asked her where that little rhyme came from, she pulled a book from her bookshelf and handed it to me: it was her copy of The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. I was amazed to discover that it was published in 1913, more than forty years before I was born, and that Dunbar had lived in the time "just after slavery." Then I sat dumbfounded as my mother proceeded to recite the poem "In the Morning," from memory. She had memorized it for a school recitation contest when she was a girl of twelve or thirteen, just about my age at the time. It was then I knew that I wanted to be a poet – to create something that someone like my mother would carry in her Sasa and share with her children.
This particular Dunbar poem is now a part of my family's Sasa. I have memorized this poem and recite it whenever possible. I later taught it to my niece who is currently teaching it to her son and daughter.
My own poetry might be considered modernist in style, and while I strive for the linguistic supremacy of Tolson and the naked imagery of Hayden, I tend toward simpler and less subtle rhythms. The influence of the spirituals is evident in my work, both thematically and structurally. This excerpt from my poem "How She Kept the Baby Quiet When She Fled" employs a "griot-like" parallel structure with the repetition of key phrases, containing the imagery of the runaway slave.
How she kept the baby quiet—
When she stole from the compound
As she slipped from the halter
After chewing through the tether
Where the reins were attached—
How she kept the baby quiet—
When she fled through the woods
Where she hid in the trees
After ransoming her hide
At the station by the railroad— (1-10)
Many readers have commented on the similarity of this poem to the experience of the character "Sethe" in Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved. Although I wrote the poem in 1992 I had not yet read the novel, and did not read it until just before the film was released in 1998. Morrison's Sasa and my own would appear to overlap.
In true African tradition, the spirits of Terry, Wheatley, Horton, Dunbar, Johnson, Cullen, McKay, Hughes, Tolson, and Hayden, inhabit the Sasa of contemporary African American poets. In a sense, we see their spirits regularly and we call upon them to guide us in our work. Baraka, Grandmaster Flash, and KRS-One are already seen as "old school" rappers, although they still contribute to the communal Sasa. Earlier poets like Terry, Wheatley, Horton, and Dunbar may move into the Zamani, to that even deeper place of collective memory to join the ranks of the ancestors alongside the unknown makers of the spirituals. But through Sankofa, the spirit and knowledge of their work will be available to future generations of African American poets who seek to join the tradition of the griot.