(this is my poem that was just published in Volume 44.3 of the African-American Review)

by makalani bandele

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
(Ecclesiastes 3:1)

…the quality of the music is judged not by the ability of the players, but by the success of the occasion as a social event. How good a time people had.
-Eric Charry

the signal, a break beat
dou gou dou gou dou gou dou gou kack kack kack
collects a chorus
through all the calluses and dust:
sienna in motion.
dume gou dou kack dume gou dou kack
runs parallel to thigh muscles,
a relucent line between layers,
like past incarnations,
the same intensity of light, emanating
from any number of remote voices, overlaps
to interlock. dume gou dou kack
prose breaks into meter.
forget in part, your part, but recall the whole history
of the village in tingling
tips of fingers as if it was a dream,
hands still percussing
your pattern, the pattern:
gou dou gou dou dou kack
gou dou gou dou dou kack

do not take this out of context.
there are no spectators in balandougou
or the bush.
come singly, by twos, or threes
to the challenge to enchant feet
to beat the earth into song,
match step for tone,
a hip shake for every high pitch of slap:
kack kack kack kack, gou , kack kack kack kack, gou—
strengths, weaknesses exposed
in individuals are masked
in consistory of echoes. a kinetic brume
implicates the living
dead in this circle of the living.
as identity so old it smells of smelting minerals
pours from an lenge chalice
orchestra like libation.
gou dou gou dou dou kack
gou dou gou dou dou kack
such elegant diction
and clear enunciation even
though everything
is a little out of tune as it should
be. there is a time

to fete, and to cry out;
a time to welcome the birth of ancestors,
and to marry villages; a time to thank the rains,
and to honor the sacred grove; a time to throw bones,
and to question the wind; a time to taste metal
sharp in your mouth, and a time to cut back foreskin;
how else do you keep time except with a jembe?

there is no question
after you kuku,
simply consensus:

there are drummers
and everybody else awakens
to the dance.

dume gou dou kack dume gou dou kack
dume gou dou kack dume gou dou kack
kack kack kack kack kack kack kack kack kack kack kack kack
dou gou dou gou dou gou dou gou kack kack kack