r/evolutionary love sounds: a mixtape for Assata

SIDE A: “I am not the first, nor the last”

Sister Assata, like you, I’ve always believed that r/evolution lives in the music.

Jazz, Blues, Funk, Afro-beat, Reggae, Ska, Hip-Hop, Dub.

Earth, Wind and Fire, Gil Scott-Heron, Nina Simone, James Brown, Bob Marley, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Miriam Makeba, Tracy Chapman, Tupac, Queen Latifah, Mos Def, Erykah, Lauryn, Simphiwe Dana, Ian Kamau.

There is something deeply spiritual and powerful about this music, our music, Black music. Ancient ancestral cries, drum beats of liberation, freedom songs that have been passed down from generation to generation. Beats and Basslines that have reverberated across shores: Lagos to Rio, Kingston to Addis, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Worldwide/Underground, East Coast, West Coast, Gold Coast.

It was in the music.

Constant consciousness – ‘never forget’

What we didn’t learn in classrooms we sang on the streets and hummed in our hearts.

‘Get up, Stand Up’, ‘Fight the Power’, ‘Amandla! Awethu!’ ‘Aluta Continua’, ‘Y’en a Marre’

Mobilization Music, Movement Music. People’s Music.

It was in the music that I discovered you Sister Assata.

I was only a baby when Chuck D of Public Enemy called out your name in ‘Rebel Without a Pause’;

A little older when Tupac spat your name in ‘Words of Wisdom’;

And just over twenty, thinking I was grown when Common told your story on ‘Like Water for Chocolate.’

And here I am, almost three decades old still listening to the sounds of today’s r/evolution – as the music still calls out your name in the company of others: cleaver, cabral, fanon, biko, guevara, garvey, saro-wiwa, madiba.

Like the music, Sister Assata, we too, Black Women, have struggled to exist, struggled to hold on to liberatory legacies, collective her(stories), to truths.

It was you Sister Assata that penned the lyrical poetics that spoke to my heart.

Stories of Black women struggling and supporting, loving and living;

…and living and free.

It was you Sister Assata that recognizing our absence in the grand meta-narratives of the time wrote:

“BLACK PEOPLE WILL NEVER BE FREE UNLESS BLACK WOMEN PARTICIPATE IN EVERY ASPECT OF OUR STRUGGLE, ON EVERY LEVEL OF OUR STRUGGLE.”

Like the music, sister Assata, we too, Black Women, have travelled distances crossing borders and boundaries carrying ‘home’ on our backs and love in our hearts.

Making Maroon Movements, Revolutionary Railroads.

Nanny. Funmilayo. Yaa. Nawal. Wangari.

Harriet. Sojourner. Angela. Betty. Ida. Audre. Alice. Toni.

Africa to Amerika.

New Jersey to Havana, ‘1984’ the year you arrived, the year I was born.

Not the first, nor the last.