In the Beginning was The Sound. The Sound was God.

In the Beginning was The Sound. The Sound was God.

The independence we seek, or more correctly the freedom we seek as African/Black nations from the violence of European kingdoms is not written anywhere in any geopolitical text or socio-economic book. The salvation we seek is not written in any holy religious scripture. It is in us. It is our faith coming up.

If we believe that we have come from a special place; if only we can believe that we are the children of our ancestors, who dated one another, married one another, befriended one another, birthed one another, slept with another, drunk together, sang together, then we must believe that deep down, within our bosom, our ancestors are crying out—with the Sound of their songs of freedom.

Freedom to not be scared. Freedom to live on our own lands and not be afraid. Freedom to go to the farm and not be afraid. Freedom to walk one hundred miles and not be afraid. Freedom to go fishing, farming and not be afraid. Freedom to cook and eat and not be afraid. Freedom to have children, feed our children and the freedom to educate our own children and not be afraid.

And so if we could muster a little bit of sincerity to connect with who we are, and to connect to the special place we have come from, we could muster a little bit of courage, a little bit of belief in ourselves, and in our collective will. For the freedom we seek is not written anywhere in any academic text. Just as the salvation we seek is not written in any holy religious scripture. It is right here in all of us. It is our faith coming up.

Recall that it wasn’t God, or Allah, or Jehovah, or the prophet Mohammad, or even Jesus, who saved that European terrorist ship captain from his primitive, barbaric European ways. It was the sound of the spirit of our ancestors, together, who saved that white man—as abhorrent as he came to West Africa—from his European ways. And so when he sang in the same Negro-spiritual pentatonic-tune of our highly-civilized ancestors, whom he had bound in chains for his wanton-wretched desires in the Americas, he made sure the world knew where his salvation had actually emanated from.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me

I once was lost, but now I am found

Was blind, but now I see.”

The freedom we seek from European barbarism is not written anywhere in any academic text, just as the salvation we seek is not written in any holy religious scripture. It is right here in us—children of a great original, highly civilized peoples. The freedom we seek is our faith coming up.

For a long time our ancestors have been speaking to us, in our dreams, in our naps, in our imaginations, yet we refuse the Sound that saved even that wretched European man who (according to his culture), ‘gloriously’ partook in the human trafficking of West Africans to the Americas. If the voices of our Black/African ancestors, even in bondage, can save a white, European savage, imagine the salvation, the grace, and the freedom we ignore by refusing the voices of our own ancestors?

The Sound may be new to you, but it is what many ancient African philosophical texts refer to as “The Word,” since in many African languages, for instance like in Ewe, The Sound (‘gbe-didi’) and the “The Word” (‘gbe-dodo’) are interchangeable.

In other words, there’s no sound without the word, and there’s no word without the sound. In this way, Ewes would say the rhythmic sound of a drum is ‘vu-gbe,’ which translates as ‘the drum-sound,’ or ‘the drum-language,’ or more specifically, ‘the drum-word.’ Rhythm hence, in Ewe, is not just a collection of beats, but a collection of specific sounds, or specific words. Rhythm is a language.

Therefore in the same way that one learns to speak a language with the mouth, one also learns to speak a language with drums, or for that matter with any other instrument—rhythm. For a long time our ancestors have tried to reach out through The Sound, yet we have refused to listen to the sound of our freedom. We have shut-out the voices of our ancestors, and we have become hollow, empty and we are easily swayed by one socio-political-cum-socio-economic trick after another.

The freedom we seek from Euro-American barbarism is not written anywhere in any academic text, just as the salvation we seek is not written in any holy religious scripture. It is right here in us—children of a great original, highly civilized peoples. The freedom we seek has been here since the beginning; for as it is written in the ancient African texts, “In the beginning was the Sound, and the Sound was with God, and the Sound was God.”

The freedom we seek is our faith coming up in the sound of our ancestors. If we believe that we have come from a special place; if only we can believe that we are the children of our ancestors, who dated one another, married one another, befriended one another, birthed one another, slept with another, drunk together, sang together, then we must believe that deep down, within our bosom, our ancestors are crying out—with the Sound of their songs of freedom.

If the Sound can save an European wretch, imagine what the Sound can do with us! We must believe that deep down our ancestors are still crying out with the same negro-spiritual tune—singing the songs of freedom, away from European/Euro-American barbarism.