Randy Weston & The African Rhythm

In Two Thousand Seasons, Ayi Kwei Armah writes: “we are not a people of yesterday. Do they ask how many single seasons we have flowed from our beginnings till now? We shall point them to the proper beginning of their counting. On a clear night when the light of the moon has blighted the ancient woman and her seven children, on such a night tell them to go alone into the world. There, have them count first the one, then the seven, and after the seven all the other stars visible to their eyes alone." "After the beginning they will be ready for the sand. Let them seek the sea-line. They will not have to ponder where to start. Have them count the sand. Let them count it grain from singe grain. And after they have reached the end of that counting, we shall not ask them to number the raindrops in the ocean. But with the wisdom of the aftermath have them ask us again how many seasons have flowed by since our people were unborn." "The air everywhere around is poisoned with truncated tales of our origins. That is also part of the wreckage of our people. What has been cast abroad is not a thousandth of our history, even if its quality were truth. The people called our people are not a hundredth of our people. But the haze of this fouled world exists to wipe out knowledge of our way, the way. These mists are here to keep us lost, the destroyers’ easy prey.” It is in the mist of the destroyers that Randy Weston battled. With the spirit of the ancestors, the stories he created were maps to piece the fragments together. The fragments of a fractured history—a torn being. And the rhythm upon which he built these stories are the reminders to seek oneness—a wholeness. Rhythm according to Amiri Baraka, is “the natural motion of matter.” The rhythm Randy Weston created was the material (re)creation of the map of harmony from which the world—the African/a world was dislodged. The universe, which is materialized through creative human expression. Baraka adds, “the composite rhythm of everything is everywhere. The whole life (Time, Place, and Condition) shapes rhythm, the where you be at (bloods say). And it is a physical/mental construct. Finally, it is deeper because it goes deeper. Will grow deeper, i.e., the perception of the finest(?) particular (of a) rhythm accesses properties in the perceiver (or confirms them). Rhythm’s infinite “circles” of transformation, in modes and forms and direction we do not even know exist.” “Africans used rhythm to speak and sing, to dance—to communicate over long distances with each other and to the forces of the universe.” Its censorship. Its control. Its banning was not without political, social, and cultural imposition. As a result, Africans in the diaspora cultivated new methods and evolved technologies of spiritual practice. It was inevitable as, “African religion sought to discover the human relationship to what exists always by tuning in to it, and becoming, at whatever level, at one, cognizant, conscious, “with knowing”, be possessed, by it, as the direct expression of the whole, and as a direct experience. This is the holiness (Whole/ness, at/one), the revelation.” Today, we pay tribute to Rand Weston. The artist. Theorist. Freedom seeker. The spiritual warrior. The historian. The manifestation of the healing and creative spirits of nature and universe. What you will hear next and what we present to you…are the words, artistry, ideas of Randy Weston. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock, Venezuela, the Avalon Village in Detroit; Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, Cooperation Jackson in Jackson Mississippi; Palestine, South Africa, and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!