Meditations on voices of a common tongue

Melda oh you making wedding plans

Carrying me name to obeah man

All you do, you can’t get through

I still ain’t goin married to you.

Obeah Wedding - Mighty Sparrow

The crowd sang in unison, its partially inebriated state adding folly to the chorus. Singers crooned at the top of their untrained and unrehearsed voices. But they maintained the tune of the almost drunk. But their oneness came from much more than the sharing of imbibed and imbued spirits. They spoke the same language. Not just English or some dialect thereof.

In singing that song on that Saturday night in Atlanta, those of a particular generation demonstrated a shared oneness, the things that keep them united, that draws them like black sand soldiers to a steel magnet from cities far and near.

It defines who they are and always will be. It is the shared language of the exile. For them, distance from home is calculated not by time and space but by memory. Theirs is a shared memory of a time and place, when and where they listened to the same songs, heard the same stories, believed in the same rituals. The words evoke particular images of a particular time and place. That stamps them as a member of a particular tribe. The name of their tribe distinguishes them by geography and history, but also biology and anthropology.

Their song is one of longing, a desire for home, to belong even when they don't. It is a cry of affirmation. To see them is not to know them, but to hear them is to begin to understand them. But only just a little. For understanding takes time, requires patience, and a generous portion of honesty and introspection. People from a small place they are. And always will be.