Hard voyage

Elijah and the `Mighty Hyphen'

by Johnette Rodriguez

The Return of Elijah, the African, by Sekou Sundiata, with Craig Harris
and Doudou N'Diaye. At Rites & Reason, Brown University, through June 1.

Sekou Sundiata's play The Return of Elijah, the African is a collaboration with composers Craig Harris and Doudou N'Diaye Rose and is therefore more of a poem set to music than a character drama. Directed by Talvin Wilks, with musical direction by Richard Harper, this Rites and Reasons production is an evocative reflection on the origins of the African slave trade, on the links between African-Americans and their cultural heritage in Africa, and on the connections between historical and contemporary issues for black Americans.

"Seeing but not seeing the body black, hearing but not hearing the body black, no-body knows the body black," is a theme that threads its way through Elijah, the African. It is touched on by narrator Ramon Moses, the embodiment of Elijah, picked up by the singers in the musical ensemble in a chant-like refrain and repeated by Moses at the end.

An anguished cry for understanding is heard and felt throughout the piece. First, Elijah unearths several carved wooden sculptures and masks, emblems of another time and place, in the large sand pit that forms the stage. Staring at each one intently, he seems to grasp an important part of who he is, or rather who his people are, for the Greek-like chorus reminds us, "We could all tell the story and say `I' and mean `we.' "

Next, he uncovers photocopied photographs in the sand, as the vocalists remind us of families and friends torn apart by the kidnappings and enslavement along the West African coast. One of the singers recalls, "I was sold for a handful of shells the size of fingernails." Another intones, "They looked like savages and they acted like savages," and we know she means the white slave traders, who used the same words to excuse their own crimes against humanity.

In the belly of a slave ship, Elijah thinks of his transport as "the Mighty Hyphen" -- where the concept of African-American began. He muses on the kinship among African-Americans as their overwhelming yearning to be free, not their memory of being bound and chained. "Sometime later we would survive," he relates, "to hear the music and poetry of our lives sung by us, to us."

And that is the crux of Sundiata's effort. Opening with an extended instrumental from the assembled musicians, which ranges from ear-splitting Sengalese drum-beats to an urban funk groove, The Return of Elijah, the African, announces its intention of telling its story through music. This succeeds best in an early crescendo of instrumentation and voices to a gospel intensity, tapping feelings stronger than could be reached by the words alone: "I was born, one of many gods." Bassist/vocalist Calvin Jones and keyboardist/vocalist Douglas Booth are especially effective in this passage.

Yet most of the tale is told in opera-like phrases, repeated and embellished by the three female vocalists (Carla Cook, Helga Davis and Christina M. Wheeler), like a minimalist dirge that must be decoded before it is fully comprehended. The effect on the play is to weigh it down, to slow its forward movement. And though that pace has its own function in a piece as heavy with meaning as this, some variations in tempo and tone would have better underscored Sundiata's lines.

Ramon Moses lends a genuine emotional presence to his heartfelt portrayal of the searching Elijah, and the musicians, including drummer/percussionists Damon Duewhite, Mar Gueye, Abdou M'Boup and Cheikh Mbaye, plus keyboardist Bahnamous Bowie and vocalist Fred Wells, give fervent musical underpinnings to his spoken and mimed questions.

Craig Harris and Sekou Sundiata have worked together many times; as collaborators and performers in the three-person The Circle Unbroken Is a Hard Bop seen by this reviewer at the 1993 National Black Theatre Festival, they were funny and poignant, insightful and incisive. Adding the legendary Sengalese percussionist Doudou N'Diaye Rose to the creative mix may have turned up the volume on the musical aspects of Sundiata's work, but it may also have shaped its structure.

The Return of Elijah, the African pounds out its messages, even in the repetitions of the vocalists, returning again and again to underlying beats, to a fast chop here or a lingering roll there. In its rhythms are the frantic pounding of a fearful heart, the snap of the whip across a bloodied back and the drag of chained feet up a wooden gangplank. For Sundiata, the form of his piece becomes its content.