The Essential Etheridge Knight

ILU, THE TALKING DRUM

ILU, THE TALKING DRUM The deadness was threatening us-.15 Nigerians and 1 Mississippi nigger. It hung heavily, like stones around our necks, pulling us down to the ground, black arms and legs outflung on the wide green lawn of the big white house The deadness was threatening us, the day was dying with the sun, the stillnessunlike the sweet silence after love I making or the pulsating quietness of a summer nightthe stillness was skinny and brittle and wrinkled by the precise people sitting on the wide white porch of the big white house ... The darkness was threatening us, menacing ... we twisted, turned, shifted positions, picked our noses, stared at our bare toes, hissed air thru our teeth ... Then Tunji, green robes flowing as he rose, strapped on Ilu, the talking drum, and began: kah doom I kah doom-doo:rn I kah doom lkah doom-doom-doom kah doom I kah doom-doom I kah doom I kah doom-doom-doom kah doom I kah doom-doom I kah doom I kah doom-doom-doom kah doom I kah doom-doom I kah doom I kah doom-doom-doom the heart, the heart beats, the heart, the heart beats slow the heart beats slowly, the heart beats the blood flows slowly, the blood flows the blood, the blood flows, the blood, the blood flows slow kah doom I kah doom-doom I kah doom I kah doom-doom-doom and the day opened to the sound 55 kah doom I kah doom-doom I kah doom I kah doom-doom-doom and our feet moved to the sound of life kah doom I kah doom-doom I kah doom I kah doom-doom-doom and we rode the rhythms as one from Nigeria to Mississippi and back kah doom I kah doom-doom I kah doom I kah doom-doom-doom 56 ...