Songs That Carry Us
Miles Caton on the set of the Warner Bros. movie “Sinners”.
Shabrae Jackson is an expressive arts facilitator and educator. She is the founder of Collective Tapestry and co-founder of UMBRAL, leveraging arts-based approaches to foster healing, belonging, and social change. What we admire most about Shabrae is her deep trauma-informed perspective, which reflects her exceptional self-awareness, mindfulness, and care. We are honored to have her on the BLK South Board of Advisors. Learn More
Cross that Line by Naomi Shihab Nye
Paul Robeson stood
on the northern border
of the USA
and sang into Canada
where a vast audience
sat on folding chairs
waiting to hear him.
He sang into Canada.
His voice left the USA
when his body was
not allowed to cross
that line.
Remind us again,
brave friend.
What countries may we
sing into?
What lines should we all
be crossing?
What songs travel toward us
from far away
to deepen our days?
This beautiful excerpt is from Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem You & Yours. On May 19, 1952, Paul Robeson sang to over 35,000 Canadians, standing at the borders because he could not physically cross with his body due to his activism. Yet the guards could not stop his voice and his song.
Paul Robeson singing to 35,000 Canadians (1952)
What songs have traveled to you recently?
The other day I woke up in the middle of the night and could not get back to sleep. After tossing and turning for a while in bed, I knew that the only thing that could help, would be music and song. So I got out of bed, a ritual that I have known now for many years, and I sat on my couch and got my headphones ready. I felt in that moment that I needed some old school gospel, words and tunes that had soothed my heart and body aches in years past. As I listened and as I sang, I began to weep. I cried and sang for over an hour, releasing much sorrow and sadness. There has been an overwhelm of sorrow in these past months, moving between personal losses and pain in my own family, to accompanying friends through betrayal, to walking with communities that are facing incredible oppression and challenges today.
In the cry and search for freedom, songs have always led the way. Music isn’t just performance - it’s prayer, it’s medicine, it’s strategy, it’s therapy and it’s resistance.
Could music and song be its own character as we consider saints and heroes through our current season of reflections?
Music has always been a teacher to me. Songs have served as medicine when I most need them. I can imagine that for each of us, we have our songs that can turn our day around or the songs that can bring us to tears in seconds. Today there is more “scientific research” that supports the power of music. With all the technology, they can actually see how it impacts the brain for healing, can lower stress levels, and help us to recover more quickly.
This is all true and helpful information for a medicine that many cultures and communities have used for centuries. But there is something more mystical in how I was taught to bring in music, song and rhythm into my life. My aunties would sing through their sorrows and would “cut a rug” when Spirit was moving. People have always put rhythm and a song to a task or job to get through it. And when the drums were taken away from our ancestors, the sound was placed into the body. From Gullah stick pounding to the drill and step teams of today, rhythm, beat and sound has always been part of our landscape for joy and resistance.
Melanie DeMore - Singer, Songwriter, and Vocal Activist
One of the difficult tasks before us today is to not get stuck in numbness. The impact is real, felt, and palpable. When something happens suddenly, sometimes we have a visceral body reaction, we inhale and suck in our breath in silence or with a gasping sound. Its as if our breathe has literally been taken by what we may have heard or witnessed. And when this happens we can forget to exhale, to find our breathe again and not be only in the gasp.
So how do we stay connected in the midst of fragmentation? How do we not bypass our sorrows but be willing to be with them?
In many song traditions, the use of songs, chants and wails in community spaces are used to celebrate, to mourn, and to stand. During the civil rights movement, in the midst of the cries - when it was needed, somebody would call up a song. “Hold on just a little while longer….”
When words are not enough, you sing.
“Danger of losing our humanity must be met with more humanity.”
- Toni Morrison
My singing into the night was not focused towards one specific situation, it just felt like I needed to sing. Sometimes another person’s words seem to say exactly what you need, or a simple shift or dissonance in a song can connect with us in deep ways of knowing.
It can help what has become wordless to find the shape that it needs to not only survive but to thrive. A shared value at Black South is Black Joy, a way of resting the body, mind, and spirit in response to racialized harm. Music, movement and song have always been part of the response.
So whether you find yourself in a moment of sorrow, a space of joy, or a place of numbness, remember to call up that song whenever you need it, to allow it to deepen your days. Or maybe it’s a beat, or a movement, or a hum. Whatever it is, hold it. And let new songs be born today. Put them in a medicine kit and pull them out when you most need it.
What songs can you put into your medicine kit?
What songs help you in times of distress?
What songs move you to joy and remembrance?
As Kendall and Erin prepare for their journey to North Carolina, I am reminded of my own parents migration from the south and the songs that helped them to travel. Let us pray over them with songs as they prepare for the journey ahead.
