The Sacred Gourd: Calabash, origins, and our practices of holding
Come get you some of this creative calabash!
Pull up to the table and get a piping hot bowl of gumbo.
Stir the spoon around intentionally inside the huge pot. Take a deep breath and inhale the goodness that we’ve worked hard, poured in loving attention, made just for you.
Savor the flavors of okra, onions, crab, shrimp, tomatoes, paprika, hot pepper- distinct yet blended to create something amazing. Most of us focus on the food, the material, that which is held. Today we appreciate the pot, the gourd, the container, the vessel.
We want to welcome y'all to Creative Calabash– we’re cooking up somethin special.
In Yoruba cosmology the calabash (igba) represents the entire cosmos which is talked about as a duality. One half containing the visible, the human, the earthly; the other the invisible, the ethereal, the eternal.
Nigerian art historian and author of “Ejiwapo: The Dialectics of Twoness in Yoruba Art and Culture” Babatunde Lawa writes “a mysterious power called asé is thought to hold the gourd in space, enabling the sun and moon to shine…and both living and nonliving things to exist.” The calabash is grown from the earth, overflowing with spiritual and symbolic meaning. Our calabash is a creative force that holds many things: it can sound like a rattle or drum, be carried as a container for water, food, or even medicine.
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I am grateful to the Transforming Power Fund for naming me a Radical Imagination Fellow, as a Detroit artist advancing racial justice.
When I entered this fellowship, I thought of Detroit as a rich Black soil with creativity growing forth and blooming. My metaphor changed after 2021-’22, a period in which I experienced shifts to my health, repeated hospitalizations and turmoil. I realized I don’t have the energy (yet?) to till the soil, work my own land, and be a home owner in this complicated city of metals, grit, and blood. I don’t have the energy to hold court the way I used to; to organize stage shows and festivals.
But I do continue to hold space.
I do continue to move between heaven and earth, sometimes slow as a stone or fast as a bullet/train. As friends and loved ones contribute to my “meal train” when called forth, I am moved by stories such as Stone Soup where the chef put the element of earth into the cooking pot, and neighbors responded by chipping in what fresh living offerings they had, co-creating a wonderful communal stew.
Now, I am moved by Detroit as a cultural calabash, swirling with spirit, overflowing with infinite Flavor And Beauty.
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I just got a message from Donald Jones aka Perennial Jones aka Dow Jones saying maybe it’s time for us to call forth communalism in new hip hop adventures. It reminded me of this poem I had written, which I share with you to hopefully inspire you to “give flowers” to those your heart holds in appreciation.
Flowers, While Still Alive by owólabi aboyade after Hanif Abdurraqib My father taught me To give flowers to the woman You are with, each week He taught me sometimes The gift you bring Is beautiful and already dying To change The water daily because here decay stalks To wither every mother- Loving thing in our homes Another midwestern Poet was approached By a dude After the reading They briefly stood side by side “How can Black people write about flowers at a time like this” Then he crashed his car And ran over his neighbor’s Peonies, a species no one expected To live long anyway My almost ancient father has mourned Many From Michigan to Mississippi As the fences newly painted Keep enclosing On the fields we plant Here’s my homie Donald Jones Of the dirty hands swagger Growing flowers for sale On his East Side farm Only two or three standing Houses on many blocks We call him Perennial Check him out Pluck this poem Smell its fragrance Yes another one will grow We will sing to her too.
Beautifully written and moving. The part about the energy to be tilling the soil resonates. It's a helluva shift to recognize that even stones are ever changing. So intrigued by the slow creeping change....the undercurrents that are cutting new paths to new realities.