Get Over Double Trouble

“Juba dis and Juba dat and get over double trouble Juba…”

So fun to perform yesterday at our first all-school assembly in our new Community Center! 15 of our Middle School kids pattin’ Juba to open up the Hambone Summit from the Body Music Festival. Here’s how I introduced the show to our kids:

History is a subject all school children must learn and there’s nothing so important and so painful. So much of it is telling stories about how people before us and still today around us treat each other so badly. Slavery in our country is one of the saddest of those stories and even sadder how scientists, politicians, preachers and teachers kept it all going with crafty lies they told so that mean people could sleep better at night. I often wish we didn’t have to tell you about it, but if we don’t, then we can’t notice it when it’s happening again today and we can’t make a vow to stop it.

But history is also one of the most inspiring subjects as we learn about the people who did make vows to stop it and use all their heart and imagination to survive. Juba and Hambone are the stories of people who had their drums taken away and found a way to keep drumming. Who had their stories silenced and found a way to tell them. Who had their spirit crushed and found a way to keep it alive and rise again. And when we pat these rhythms and tell these stories and keep their memory alive, we learn three very important things:

1.  Truth can be told in secret messages hidden inside poetry.

2.  It’s nice to play drums and guitars and such, but the music is not just in skins 

    and strings,it lives close to us, inside our own bodies and voices.

3.  Music lifts us up and helps us sail over, get through, dance around, all our

    double trouble.

Enjoy the show!