cuba
Where Fertile Land Is Abundant
2100
The two-bar rhythm speeds up into a synthetic frenzy and we torpedo on, whizzing past mountain lumps, parched between protective domes. Skirting past islands off Varadero, swinging down, we tuck into a harbour, under the dome of Havana.
Surface calm. A rebreather. Breathe.
Ocama.
A massive construction ship fills the docks, but behind it, domescrapers rise and the loud air smells burnt. We can’t tell machines from people or robots — busy unloading, building as if fuelled by the plastic music.
Skelele signals and we put our heads against sea surface. The frantic music is slowing, gradually,
reverting to clavé …
and then drums …
As we listen to the rhythms reversing, the dome begins to peel back. As it peels, the people begin looking more like Ke Ara, Earth People. The massive ship fades away and the city is changing too, smaller buildings and dirt streets.
We look up into a clear, melodious sky.
يغني الطائر الأسود
“The Singing Blackbird!” Skelele whispers, but we see nothing.
The port fills with sail ships and Spaniards, and some Taino, but the Singing Blackbird is heralding. With his lute, Ziryãb8 is plucking fear, warning of the arrival of a terrible ship.
We watch it approaching the harbour. Slowly. And on its prow, Zarabanda, God of War and Iron, bristles, his machete held high.
Now we can see the ghost of Ziryãb in the sky, swathed in his robes and turban, woeful.
المغني هو حارس السجلات
The singer is keeper of records.
Zarabanda hovers angrily, sparking, as enslaved Africans are brought ashore by Spaniards.
الموسيقى هي الذاكرة
music is memory
الرقص “حالة مكثفة من الاستماع
dancing is “an intense state of listening” 9
Ziryãb sings, before disappearing into a cloud.
Time has stopped.
And started moving forward again.
It is the low growl that we hear, a background hum.
On a wide promenade, some Africans are drumming, and others start dancing the Nsalabanda, weaving and knotting themselves, singing a story-song. They are making a Bantu prenda, a charm for Zarabanda, Skelele says.
Swirling, stamping, riling, they dance to let the soul rip, tearing away all that holds them captive, and we see the dance become the mambo.
As Zarabanda stays suspended above the dancing singers, a giant calabash is brought forward by the surrounding crowd. We float closer. From inside the calabash, the tinkling sound of a kalimba is getting louder.
The calabash opens up slowly and the thumb piano is playing itself, playing its flattened metal nails for Zarabanda, and growing. Its sound is growing too, and the people, all of them, are dancing as the calabash shrinks and the kalimba morphs into a piano, playing its own keys into Latin dance music.
And the Spaniards are playing a lute and
something like a flute
brass is shining and blaring
and time won’t stay still again.
Pardos, Free Blacks, and Morenos
singing punto.
A different rhythm — décima form.
The dancing turns up from contradanza to danzon.
An Ireme dancer takes the centre
cowbells around his waist.
“Abakuá.” Skelele slips.
Rumba dancers and players on trumpets
trombones and saxophones
redoblante side drums and bombo bass drums
quinto and the lowest-pitch congo drum
tumbadora
tumble in.
Metal bells, spoons hitting pans
iron rims ringing
the congas rise again.
La clavé and maracas, piano, full drum kit
bamboo guagua
and the dancers are packed together and whirring
son, mambo, salsa, songo, timba music
swirls them faster, richer.
And who is this?
Chano Pozo and Dizzy Gillespie
leading an Afro-Cuban jazz orchestra
Manteca, all suited up, right there.
Again, the timespin changes
the pirate-style swagger kerchiefs and bling
negros curros into Black-American rappers.
Punto guajiro poetry slides into rap.
All of a sudden, around us, the water is flowing silver and gold, thickening, tugging us out of the port and up. Underwater, we can’t see very far, and the music has faded into the chink and clink of jewellery, gold-and-silver headpieces, necklaces, and bracelets, tumbling with emeralds and coloured stones — in the stealing flow of the Gulf Stream, from south to north.
There is no time in water. Not in my seas. When animals created land and we were Gods and everything was one, there was and is no “time.”
To feel the passage of all that has gone, in water as it passes through me, is to be. Daca.
If I can bear to be this sea, there is nothing to be afraid of. Even without a naniki.
Skelele seas me.
With this heavy pull twisting us, he has wrapped his fin-hand around mine.
I am not resisting.
We will go where we are to be.
In all my salt years, I have paid my dues, for my life, my ancestors, naniki, Ke Ara, with every grain of salt and water.
This is our way, a life of being ever present, past, and future.
We will go on even though we could escape this flow and head back. Jan jan catu.
I can sea beyond time. So what is this fear? “Hurry,” they say. If not, we won’t be at all. “Become protective, faster.”
So we can slow the synthetic race
the pace, racing us against ourselves
and each other. Skelele too?
If I can be in his sky as he is with my sea
then flow me onward, forward.
Now orange-and-brown light lines are beginning to appear, dots at first, that look like the jewels in the thick stream. Showing the way for us, traces of traders, Africans and my people from the South, my islands — to the shoreline of Turtle Island.
A sharp tug and Skelele pulls me up, a leap and a splash. And above the glittering sea, a large floating bridge is joining Cuba to Florida. We leap again and glimpse pods of boatish buildings docked onto the bridge. Hotels? With name signs like Cortez and The Mariel.
Splash back into red light lines, bright and painful, and they sweep us faster in memory of the people of the Mariel Boatlift, and all the drowned souls of those trying to reach Bimini.
“We should go back,” Skelele says, trying to slow down, but he can’t.
Ghostly seagull cries reach us. Kii!! Kii!! Kii!!
But we are almost there, and the guilt of the Gulf Stream begins to ease, stripping the last ribbons of gold and silver from Skelele’s hair.