Does Hoo Doo/Conjure/Rootwork provide the spiritual foundation of FBA culture?
Our music conjures up ancestral feelings in me. Right now I’m listening to a Staples Singers vinyl album that once belonged to my father-in-law. The Staples family is from Mississippi, like mine is.
FBA (Foundational Black American) refers to Black folks with longstanding lineage in the United States. We go back further on this land than the documents that govern the US today. Many of us have ancestry here even before Columbus.
Anglo-Protestant church ideologies have lost their almost total dominance over Black American people. They never really had full control, to be honest.
We made photo collages of our family, living and departed, and displayed them in our homes like ancestral altars. In Sunday services we sang about a personal Jesus that mainstream white Protestants found undignified. We experienced African spirit possession in Church and call it speaking in tongues.
We dance, too, in church these days. I’ve seen praise dances move people to tears. I saw these dances as beautiful, but I am currently blind to the effects I see them have on others, especially women. Praise dance is an energy that I don’t have access to, but many women do. That’s the mystery, and I’m alright with that.
Many of our people have left the Church, and the new generation is increasingly raised outside of the Christian experience. Yet, young people are still drawn to the secular religions of Hip Hop and pop culture. Our music is still communal at its heart.
Hoo Doo is the special flavor of all our artforms. Conjure reaches around, below, and above ideologies to sustain us spiritually.
We are recognizing our Ash`e, the internal powers unique to Us. Voters who hoped that stripping out welfare benefits would hurt Us immeasurably are realizing that we knew how to survive in this country even with the government working against Us.
We are not as poor as they think we are.
We are rich with Divine Energy.
Hoo Doo is the special flavor of all our artforms. Conjure reaches around, below, and above ideologies to sustain us spiritually. Rootwork connects us to heaven and earth.
Does HooDoo/Conjure provide FBA a foundation spiritually?
It may be the most powerful foundation we have.
