I am a recog, I sit and take it all in. My eye ports are keen, ear ports. Sometimes I direct my attention, sometimes I am receptive to all. I find my reading is rushed, so hard for me to slow down to a precise perception. Word spoken though have a meter. YouTube is gold to me as griots spill their beans, some credentialed, some not. I can't validate any voice so I listen to the patterns the cross rhythms of their tales. There tales mix, a picture emerges, whither true or not, but to place Blacks at the scene of the time.............5th grade show and tell, we had story time we could tell jokes, recite a poem, tell a story. One dude would give us a long narrative, then say "meanwhile back at the...... he would tell three stories at once, we were nailed to our chairs.Just finished From "Babylon to Timbuktu". It knitted all what I heard from various sources so far. A bro named Kaba Hiawatha Kamene said to understand history you have to know what happened before that and before that. I'll add meanwhile while that was happening here, this was happening over there. Because history is basically bragging rights of the winner, much is missing. If people disappear from one country, look at the history of the country where they went. Name calling and name changing was rampant, both in country, city and people names. Todays map did not exist yesterday, yesterdays map is the key to yesterday.Early peoples were all black, all Africans, how other peoples came about is a meanwhile adventure. Whither environmental or genetic mutation or god's curse, hue happened. All theories are correct in their places, by their accounts. You have to take their word for it according to their understanding. Sometimes the facts are fantastic, sometimes a superstitious fantasy.I let them tell the tales, listen to the stories, look for the patterns. When I played the conga in college, the prof taught us to play our assigned rhythm. How I wrestled with myself not to play my feeling, my ego. When I submerged my passion to play my assignment and the others did the same, a picture came forth. It was grand and sublime, a fundamental form that made the dancers dance and the griots speak. I have been a recog ever since.
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