Amid the poverty and suffering in and around his Harlem childhood in the 1930s, James Baldwin sensed he’d grown up amidst the performance rhythms in a cultural tradition that kept people from becoming dominated by their circumstances by enabling a nuanced and vital traffic between interior and social worlds. That tradition enacted a level of experience at the border of the secret and the unconscious. For him, it took its most profound and complex form in black music.
As we approach the island men toss sheets of black tarpaulin like flags and cover their fishing boats, while a fanfare of children jump jubilantly from the jetty into the Lago de Nicaragua. It is late afternoon and my travelling companions and I have been squashed in buses for the better part of the day. For the last part of this journey, by boat, the crossing has been smooth despite warnings that Hurricane Paloma will cross into Nicaragua.
The newborn I was looking for was asleep in the arms of her father, an older man, lean with well carved biceps. Worry spills out of the hollow of his eyes. She was barely visible, hidden in the folds of a new kitengye. Her mother wasn’t well enough to begin breastfeeding. On pediatric rounds yesterday, Jennifer provided boxed milk for the baby, whom they have named Nightie.
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