“Where did you get that drum?”
Let’s walk gently, for we never know what pains our neighbors carry.
Modified by Author, Justin Olhipi
“Where did you get that drum?” asked an elder Native woman standing beside me. I was at an Indigenous People’s Day rally, playing a drum that I’d made from a wooden box that smoked salmon came in. The box, wide and flat like a cigar box and about twice the size, hung at about waist height from a length of twine slung over the nape of my neck. I was tapping it in time with the rhythm in my head. The drum was light and portable, easily made from simple materials, easily replaced if damaged or lost. I often bring small musical instruments with me when out and about, it helps ease my social anxiety.
“I made it, from a box I got at the Goodwill store,” I replied. Where was she going with this?
“Who showed you how to play it?”
“Nobody,” I replied. “I just picked it up and started playing.”
“Are you Native?” Every now and then someone asks me this. I’m a passant-blanc Creole from Louisiana. My family thinks we’re white, and that’s what my birth certificate says. I look like my recent ancestors: a Euro-mutt of Mediterranean descent. But a DNA test confirmed what I’ve always suspected. There’s some Indigenous, Asian, and African ancestry a bit more ways back. And, after much probing, an elderly uncle told me that we were related to “some Apaches who jumped off the prison train going to Florida.”
“No,” I replied to the Native elder. “I’m from Louisiana. There’s a story in my family that we’re related to some Apache who jumped off a prison train in Louisiana near the Texas border, but my family always says we’re white.”
“Apache, you say” she said, studying my face closely. Her eyes on my face pricked my skin, and I squirmed a little. “I see it,” she said after a bit. “That train was from White Mountain, where my people live. Our women play drums made from boxes like yours. But we only do it at home. We don’t do it out.”
“So I shouldn’t play it here?”
She thought a moment and then said, “It’s ok. God gave you that drum. It’s in your blood.”
Memories in blood. I’ve had many uncanny experiences like this over the years. Always involving math or music or both.
Like the time I was around 3 or 4, with my family visiting relatives. Sitting on the floor with a drum in my lap. The drum was an unglazed earthenware bowl with a goatskin stretched across the top. My aunt had brought it back from a trip to Morocco. I remember a pleasant tingling sensation pouring down my head and into my hands, which moved rapidly in time with a lively rhythm pulsing through my body.
“Look at that!” my aunt said, “She’s just like a little African!”
For a few Christmases and birthdays after that I asked for a drum like my aunt’s. No, I was always told. Daddy doesn’t like the noise.
Or the time I was in the grocery with my mother, and saw some guys in the break area puzzling over their math homework. It was a tricky affair, quadratic forms. That’s a topic in high school algebra that requires a deeper level of pattern recognition than many students can manage. I walked in, that familiar electric tingling through my body. Swaying with ecstasy, I picked up a pencil and showed them how it’s done. I was maybe 9 or so. I was in the process of teaching myself basic algebra, hadn’t gotten to that topic yet. Not quite as impressive as a 3 year old solving differential equations, but interesting still…
Or the time I browsed the flea market in downtown New Orleans, and happened upon a balafon. That’s a West African instrument resembling a xylophone. Again. I felt the electricity course through my body as I picked up the mallets and played a tune that ran through my head. People gathered to watch and listen. When I finished, they clapped, and the vendor asked me if I ever played the balafon before. No, I said, I’d never even seen one. He shook his head and said something in his own language, then tried to bargain with me to buy the balafon. I politely declined, even his best price was beyond my budget. “Come back and see me when things get better for you,” he said. “God wants you to play.”
Made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0
Scientists say that humans may have skills and knowledge transmitted through our DNA. This is not as far-fetched as it seems. We have all heard of child prodigies who show adult-level skills — usually in math or the arts — without having been taught. Though true child prodigies — untaught children with professional level skills at a young age — are very rare, many people have talents or “knacks” for picking up various complex skills quickly and easily. Most people are like that one way or another, or know someone like that.
Other species have what we call “instincts,” inborn species-specific behavior that ensures their survival. Like Monarch butterflies migrating along a sure route that they’ve never seen before, or various birds with their calls and migration and nesting habits. Even more remarkable: solitary reptile species such as desert tortoises and vipers — how do they know how to survive, having never been with others of their kind?
And if I could play drums and balafon and solve quadratic forms without being taught, and if certain gifted children can do college-level math when most kids their age are just learning to count, what else is there?
Do my far-flung ancestors’ pains spur me on this lifelong and often-Sisyphean struggle for justice? Do descendants of Holocaust survivors feel what their ancestors suffered? Do Natives feel how their ancestor’s bodies were mutilated and desecrated as their lands were stolen? Do Black people living today know how it feels to have a quilt of scars on their backs?
Let’s walk gently, for we never know what pains our neighbors carry.
Readers — your turn! Any skills and knowledge that you have without being taught? Do you ever feel your ancestors’ pains? Please tell us about it.
