Translator: David DeRuwe Reviewer: Claudia Sander
I've been thinking these days that ...
"I wish
books went to the right people,
the fairy tales had black princesses,
these targets weren't on our foreheads,
that our weapons were just pens ...
What if our pains weren't laughter in the soap operas?
If our dreams didn't die in alleyways?
I wish our paths didn't lead to cells
and our weapons were only pens ...
I wish we had more choices,
we weren't without choices,
in the lessening ...
I wish they didn't die going to schools,
I wish if we were proof ...
What if they didn't shoot into the slave quarters.
I wish the young black man were bulletproof.
I wish the young black man were bulletproof,
word-proof,
chains-proof,
the proof of everything.
It's historic.
They want to wipe us out."
Pleasure to meet you! My name is Cristal.
(Applause) (Cheers)
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)
Pleasure to meet you!
My name is Cristal,
and I'm the daughter of Gisele Rocha,
granddaughter of Adalgisa,
niece of Uncle Dôni,
great great granddaughter of Ignácia,
and I'm a poet.
I want to share a memory with you
that was fundamental for me to understand why I'm here
and to redefine my art.
It all started when I was on the sofa at home,
and my grandma came to me with a little notebook,
and in it were some verses and half-completed, scrawled phrases.
She said that it was a song that she remembered hearing
while she straightened up the house with her grandma.
I searched these phrases on Google,
and I found a track titled "Mãe Preta," Black Mother,
interpreted by Conjunto Tocantins
in 1943.
The song said more or less the following,
"While the whip hit her lover,
Black Mother rocked the master's white son ...
Wrinkly skin, white kinky hair
Lace of her uniform, fallen on her hip
Rocking the cradle of the master's son
That only recently the mistress had gotten."
When I heard these lyrics, I started imagining the whole scene.
I started to envision who it was that wrote the song,
and I started to see the black mother,
the master's white son,
the mistress,
and the black mother's lover who suffered from the whip.
All this registered in my memory,
from my grandma's memory of her grandma listening to the song.
Memories.
My grandma, recently, has breathed memories,
and, to tell the truth,
now I've begun to understand more how important they are for black people.
When I started to think about the song,
I understood that Ignácia had taught a lot to my grandma
about the precautions she had to take with her body,
how she was seen, and how she saw herself as well.
That's when I understood that Ignácia, this beautiful woman in the picture,
also was the black mother,
my grandma was the black mother,
and my mother was the black mother.
And, thinking of all these feelings,
I realized my grandma's emotional tears
weren't only from longing and weren't only from yearning -
they were from "banzo."
Banzo is black nostalgia, it's black memories,
it's nostalgia for the land of your birth,
it's nostalgia for home.
The black population lives ruminating on this banzo
and dies without even knowing the way home.
We, black people, are targets all the time,
and I'm a target, being here on this stage,
from those who want to silence me.
But how do I leave my memories, how do I pass on my story,
and how do I make all this last forever?
Well, my answer, also, was in the family memories.
I had an uncle who I didn't get to know.
He died before he was 30.
His name was Daniel, and he was better known as Dôni.
He worked doing light shows for events.
From this, he had a close relationship with art.
All the stories that dealt with Dôni
were always filled with joy,
moments of happiness with laughter,
so I always imagined him, even without us having met,
as a very bright, amusing, and high-spirited person.
And inspired by the song I had heard, "Mãe Preta,"
I started searching other old things from my grandma,
some memories and some photos,
and I found diaries and journals from my uncle
where he wrote of his saddest moments,
of solitariness and being just a step from the precipice.
He was a young black man who had the desire to be infinite,
and maybe this desire didn't fit anymore in his body
because he was limited by depression.
Nobody teaches us to talk about feelings because black feelings never matter.
My other response was in Ignácia and her oral ancestry.
In addition to the "Mãe Preta" song which had touched me so much,
she told me the story of a black woman who worked as a domestic,
and who played the piano beautifully.
One time, a visitor praised her,
and the master, the house owner, was offended,
got jealous of the employee,
and broke her fingers.
And, suddenly,
maybe the only refuge that she had,
inside her art, inside that house,
in the midst of so much repression,
in the midst of so much suffering,
was snatched from her.
And the memory of delighting in melodies, and maybe a breath, a respite,
wasn't so happy any more
because it hurt more to delight in melodies.
I started to understand that we return to banzo over again,
the same feeling that I felt when I heard the song Black Mother.
It's all we have left.
And I speak, yes, of numerous people, plucked from Africa,
not respecting their internal conflicts, territories, their relationships,
and their affectivity,
putting all the pain of diverse peoples into only one place, that is forgetting.
Plucking memories from a people who live for memories.
Just as they don't tell us
Black Mother's story before she cradled the master's son.
Just as we can't talk about feelings
because our ancestors were worried about surviving first.
Just as they don't tell us
about the "mulata" who didn't want her body to be seen as an object anymore.
It's as if we walked, each time, around the tree of forgetfulness
before embarking on the slave ships.
I understood that these two references from my family
were important so I can realize
that I learned much more about my history
and about the social contexts in which I'm included and which I'm not,
in family reunions, barbecues, meetings,
exchanging memories and experiences, being kind, being ourselves,
than from the history classroom
which, to be sincere,
told a very superficial version about my origins.
Children running, big smiles, loose hips,
and suddenly all the worries that a black body must have in the street
are not important.
The way that I handle myself,
the way that I hide my hands, the way that I look at you,
the volume of my voice ...
never was a threat and never was suspect.
I wasn't a target.
I was just me with my equals.
It was as if we were our ancestors,
before any invasion,
before whatever delimitation of our bodies,
before nullifying our wills,
our existence, and our feelings.
I was thinking of them.
Just as Ignácia registered her banzo and eternalized her life in me,
and just as Dôni eternalized, as difficult and sad as it may have been,
his life in verses,
I want to eternalize our stories.
I want to eternalize real stories!
Because, for all time, maybe,
these family stories might be our only sources of affection
in which we are our own protagonists,
in our own stories.
Because it's the television, the books, the films, everything ...
they whitewashed everything that can get close to me.
And how is it that people will believe
that there were African empires with black kings and queens,
wealth in our hands,
if we know Cleopatra as Elizabeth Taylor?
If, to know about Egypt, there's a soap opera that tells a little,
but it has a totally white cast, and nobody looks like me?
How will I believe we already had affection,
that we were already happy,
if they synthesize our history in pain, suffering, and whip?
How is it that I will believe skin color isn't important?
(Sigh)
I was thinking that, if you don't understand what I'm talking about,
it's because you're white.
And you've had your story and your memories
eternalized by the whole world.
They're your revolts, they're your revolutions,
your wars, your inventions, your theories, your phrases,
your texts.
They're your deeds, they're your laws!
I read about your books, your romances, your dramas.
I already know enough about you
to understand that, besides being the great scientist,
you're also the great teacher, the great philosopher,
the great fighter, the great musician, the great thinker, the great hero,
the abolitionist, and our savior.
And even when the world cried many sorrows,
yours were the most painful,
and I had to feel them also.
But, many times, I asked myself if black pain was important to anyone?
Eternizarte is all that was wiped out,
forgotten by time, registered in art.
Our oral tradition is our art, it's our weapon.
It's all we have to continue existing.
Like Ignácia told these stories, and like this song was important for me,
I want to be important, too,
for the stories of my family, where we are the protagonists,
where we tell our own stories before the suffering.
And if it's needed to talk of pain, we talk,
but we won't forget that we also smiled.
"I wish they hadn't pulled us out of there ...
I wish it weren't so difficult to breathe ...
I wish that they hadn't wiped it out,
if all were forgotten ...
Will the one who wiped out my glories also wipe out my suffering?
I wish that I weren't confetti in the spectacle,
while my blood keeps decorating the asphalt.
I wish to see the young black man flying high,
before even being pulled,
before even 23 minutes, before even 23 years ...
I wish they weren't colored white ...
I wish they hadn't killed Marielle Franco ...
I wish black pain mattered ...
I wish that 'a shot in the dark' didn't kill ...
I wish the young black man were bulletproof
I wish the young black man were bulletproof ...
word-proof,
chains-proof,
the proof of everything.
It's historic.
The young black men are the proof of everything.
The young black men are the proof of everything, just like Martina,
just like Negra Jaque, just like Ignácia,
just like my grandma,
just like Dôni,
just like Bruno Negrão, Afrovulto, Janove, Sopapo Poético,
Winnie,
Da Costa, Dall Farra,
Poetas Favelados, Nós Da Rua,
and me."
We will eternalize the art
that will pulsate the story of a people that's tired of being forgotten.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)