Groovin' Griot

Deborah Thomas: I think I came to
recognize that how I encounter the world

is first and primarily through movement.

You know, how I understand
what's going on in a situation,

anywhere, is through movement.

the ways people's bodies are, the ways
people's bodies are engaging or not

engaging with each other, people's
gestures, people's small movements.

OreOluwa: Welcome to Groovin
Griot, a podcast about how

we use dance to tell stories.

I'm OreOluwa Badaki.

Azsaneé: And I'm Azsaneé Truss.

Let's get groovin'

OreOluwa: For this
episode, we spoke with Dr.

Deborah Thomas, the R.

Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology
at University of Pennsylvania

and Director of the Center for
Experimental Ethnography, or CEE.

Azsaneé: Dr.

Thomas has worn many hats over her
dynamic career and we started by

asking about how her background as a
professional dancer with Urban Bush

Women, among other companies, inform
the choices and moves she made as

a researcher, professor, community
organizer, and multidisciplinary artist.

Deborah Thomas: I think often one looks
back at the trajectory of career choices

or movement from one space to the next
and it, it looks like it all was planned,

like it makes sense and it's seamless.

But at the time, it was totally just
serendipity or right place, right time.

And, uh, Bush Women was definitely
one of those kinds of, um, things.

When I graduated from college,
I moved to New York to dance.

I had gotten into That two year program at
Alvin Ailey I had auditioned in December,

in between semesters, and they anticipated
that I was going to come in January.

Uh, but obviously, I couldn't, so they
just, said I'd have to reaudition.

But I had also gotten a
fellowship from Brown.

Um, that I was going to defer because
of the Ailey, um, opportunity.

And that was a fellowship
called the Arnold Fellowship.

And you wrote a sort of
independent research project.

And what I had written to
do was to go to Brazil.

And work with, uh, dancers and musicians
and theater artists there, who were

sort of coming out of a renewed
interest in sort of Black arts, right?

And people who were at a time
in New York and in the U.

S.

when multiculturalism was starting
to really become a buzz word, they

seemed to be moving back to an
appreciation of a specific, you know,

Afro-Brazilian identity that was
grounded in the music and the dance

and the ritual practices of Candomblé.

So when I came back from Brazil and
needed a job, I called Bush Women

and they ended up, uh, actually
needing an administrative assistant.

So I started and on my first day,
um, the company at that point toured

about 35 weeks out of the year.

And it happened to be a day when
they were home and Jawole, uh,

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, who is the
founding artistic director of Urban

Bush Women, Jawole was in the office.

And so I was meeting her and
she was looking at my resume.

And she said, Oh, I didn't
know you were a dancer.

And you know, the conversation
just kind of continued like that.

That day or the next day, somebody
dropped out of the company and they were

leaving the following week on a tour.

And so she had to have
a really quick audition.

So she called me, asked me to
audition, but, um, I was a quick study.

So she hired me and that's how I
ended up, um, joining the company.

And I loved working with Urban Bush Women.

I loved, um, seeing the world, through
the practice of dance, and therefore

linking in all these different places
with other artists and other practitioners

and people who were taking us to their
favorite spots, you know, after the show.

Um, and it was a real, um,
different kind of education.

OreOluwa: I remember when we had this
conversation, Azsaneé , you and I were

both struck by how thoughtfully Dr.

Thomas seemed to follow her
curiosity and her intuition.

Throughout her early career she remained
clear sighted about how she hoped to

use art to collaborate with and support
the communities that matter to her.

Azsaneé: Right, and this delicate
balance was a core aspect of

her work with Urban Bush Women.

Deborah Thomas: And then, um, Jawole
was interested in a more kind of

popular education, uh, practice.

So she brought some people on board with
us to begin a process of thinking about

how we could use dance and music as
tools for other kinds of social change,

consciousness raising, um, conflict
resolution, you know, all of these sort

of popular education tenants and brought
in a bunch of people to train us in

these practices and to train her as well.

And the first, uh, the first, we called
them community engagement projects.

So the first community engagement project
we did was in New Orleans for three months

at the beginning of 1992, and we spent
the two years prior to that back and forth

to New Orleans, working with different
grassroots organizations and community

based groups, thinking with them about
what they wanted to do, if they felt

like a collaboration would be useful.

What kind of collaboration that would be.

And ultimately we developed a kind of
cohort of maybe 10 different organizations

who wanted to work with us and it was
just a really great experience and it got

me thinking about, um, what would that
look like at a higher level of scale.

You know, we were working really
at the grassroots level, which is

so needed and I think so important
and still something that You know,

I know you all are committed to,
and that I've been committed to.

Um, but I was interested in, you
know, how artists change the world.

Azsaneé: As fate would have
it, or maybe the ancestors, Dr.

Thomas found her way to a Ph.

D.

program at NYU, where she got her
bearings as an anthropologist.

OreOluwa: She then found another
opportunity that would lay the foundations

for the work she now does with the
Center for Experimental Ethnography.

Deborah Thomas: I saw an ad for a postdoc,
um, at Wesleyan at the Center for the

Americas, which was just written for me.

It was on cultural production
in the Anglophone Caribbean.

You know, and since I had done my
research on the ways, um, dancers

and other performing artists
in Jamaica were attempting to

transform a national consciousness
or a national cultural identity.

It just seemed like a really good fit.

And, uh, it worked out and that
tracked, tracked me, you know, in

a certain kind of academic way.

Um, and I guess, in a way, the CEE is sort
of a way to go back to that original plan

of having a kind of community arts center.

But this community is university and
beyond, um, but it still is really about

using the arts to create important
conversations that can be world changing.

Azsaneé: CEE is sort of a parent
organization for the Collective for

Advancing Multimodal Research Arts, or
CAMRA, which is where Ore, myself, and

our guest from our last episode, Dr.

Jasmine Blanks Jones, began engaging
in conversations around embodiment,

dance, and African diasporic traditions.

OreOluwa: Dr.

Thomas was also on the
panel we discussed with Dr.

Blanks Jones, last episode,
called What the Body Knows.

And like our last episode, we
wanted to pick up where we left off.

We asked Dr.

Thomas about a question that she
had posed on this panel in 2021.

Um, but the question that you asked that
I thought would be really great to kind

of bring it to this space, you would
ask, does the body know differently?

In other words, do the things
you learn from the body present

themselves in different ways from
the things you learn in other ways?

You had mentioned, you know.

It's a different type of education.

What sort of education is that for you?

Deborah Thomas: It's a
really good question.

OreOluwa: You asked it, it came from you!

Deborah Thomas: Yeah, but I
think it's a question that

many of us struggle with right?

And, um, you know, we talk a lot about
embodied knowledge as if it's something

That we all know the definition of.

Um, and I think we don't.

I mean, it's something I'm actually
exploring now, trying to do some reading,

obviously, of work we already know,
Aimee Cox's work, Jasmine Johnson's

work, uh, Myal Berry's work, like
dancers who have also become, uh,

anthropologists or ethnographers in one
way or another, and are thinking through

the body toward other things, right?

Obviously what I've been doing as well.

I think I came to recognize that
how I encounter the world is first

and primarily through movement.

You know, how I understand
what's going on in a situation

anywhere is through movement.

The ways people's bodies are, the ways
people's bodies are engaging or not

engaging with each other, people's
gestures, people's small movements.

And I think that also comes through then
in the visual work that I do, because

somebody was watching one of the films at
one point and said to me after, You know,

I think because you're a dancer, you're
picking up on gestures that are recurring

because when you edited that film, what
I saw was the recurrence of particular

gestures over and over and over.

I was like, yeah, that's,
I said, that's really cool.

You know, I'm like, yes,
tell me what I'm doing

OreOluwa: more

Deborah Thomas: because I think we
do these things and we don't know.

That it's because at our core,
how we see the world is through

movement or through gesture or
through dance or through whatever.

But you know, then it requires
somebody else to point that out and

to tell us what that means, you know?

So also I'm waiting for people
to tell me what it means.

Azsaneé: Something I found
really interesting in Dr.

Thomas' response, Ore, was how she talked
about the information her body takes in

without ever really thinking about it.

OreOluwa: Right.

We talked a bit about how when you're
learning a new movement or combo,

you sometimes don't have time to
break down all the steps cognitively.

You sort of have to release
the need to know the movement

in order to do the movement.

And although this sometimes happens
subconsciously, it's still a skill

that is learned and cultivated.

Azsaneé: And, at least in African
diasporic dance traditions,

that skill is cultivated in and
with community, something Dr.

Thomas also talked about.

One of her ongoing projects
is the Tambufest, an annual

celebration of a dynamic and vibrant
Jamaican tradition called Kumina.

The event is a collaboration between Dr.

Thomas, Junior "Gabu" Wedderburn,
Nicholas "Rocky" Allen, and the St.

Thomas Kumina Collective.

OreOluwa: There's a great description of
Tambu Fest and kumina on the CE website,

and we'll link to that in the show notes.

But, as a summary "Kumina was developed
by members of the self described

Bongo Nation, who found a unifying
cultural heritage through Kumina, one

that interweaves musical, linguistic,
movement, and spiritual practices

that connect them to the ancestors."

Let's take a quick movement break and
listen to the sounds of Tambuf est.

Audio from Tambufest: I don't know.

Azsaneé: Here's Dr.

Thomas again with more on Tambufest,

Deborah Thomas: right so, you
know, we run this Kumina Festival

every year called Tambufest.

Um.

And by we, I mean

me, Junior "Gabu" Wedderburn,

Deborah Thomas: who has
been longtime collaborator.

In fact, he was the drummer with Bush
Women when I was dancing with them.

So we've been working
together for over 30 years.

And, um, he has always, um,, ,as a
musician, worked toward the kind of, um,

preservation and elaboration of these
dance and drumming forms in Jamaica.

Um, so Junior and me and, um,
Nicholas "Rocky" Allen with the St.

Thomas Kumina Collective.

And, um, I initially saw, my
work with that as support, right?

So I'm going to support Junior and
what he wants to do because he has

supported me and what I want to do.

And he rejected that.

He was like, no, you have to take this
on as fully as I take on your projects.

You know, this is also you.

And, you know, that was very uncomfortable
for me because, um, you know, I'm

not from this particular community,
I'm not Black in the way that they're

Black, you know, I feel self conscious
if I get up in the big public setting

and dance with people because I feel
like I then become the spectacle.

People wonder, Oh, what's that
White girl doing up there?

Or, you know, because
that's what they see, right?

Um, in that context.

Um, You know, but it's been a really
interesting thing to have to sort of

abandon a little bit or just let go of
a kind of hyper attunement to the way my

body is read in this space, which is a
space of, um, producing something, right?

Producing through an artistic practice,
a space for community to come together

and think together and problem solve or
learn together about different kinds of

issues with the speakers that we bring
in to that, um, but to have to kind of

suspend like anthro, I think also the
reading, my first year, I had to suspend

a lot of disbelief, like reading all of
this work by people who were talking about

primitives in Africa and all of this, and
using this language, I was like, what?

You know, it was like, okay, I'm going to
get through this because I know there's

something on the other end, you know.

So now it's like I have to do that the
other way, like I have to suspend the

understanding of how my body is read
in that space and just be, You know, be

as a spirit and as a close friend and
collaborator and as somebody who's known

people in this community for years,
you know, and just let go of that.

OreOluwa: The point Dr.

Thomas makes there about suspending
judgment or disbelief in order to be

present and awake to what is going on
around you, had me thinking about one of

the other points she made during the "What
the Body Knows" panel a couple years ago,

where she talks about dance as a portal.

Deborah Thomas: And I think it was because
dance was really always for me, a portal.

You know, sometimes a portal to the kind
of joy and ecstasy and togetherness and

freedom, certainly that you're talking
about in so far as one experiences that

in different settings, whether it's on
stage with other people really feeling

a piece of choreography going to a
next level, or it's, you know, in a

club or going down the line in Haitian
dance class, or, you know, everything

just clicking, those kinds of things.

And so, you know, as an individual, it
sort of helped me to enter new spaces,

you know, but then later when I was
performing with Urban Bush Women, it

also, then dance also became a kind of
portal toward broader projects of social

and political change, you know, so it
was the, the, the tool that we use to

access these other forms of consciousness
raising or other ways of being together

or ways of reducing tension or anxiety
or conflict within communities are ways

to teach literacy, or, you know, so
embodiment then became this other thing

you know it was still something that.

I loved to do, personally,
but also it then served some

other kind of social purpose.

So that's what I ultimately
ended up studying.

Azsaneé: This concept of dance, or
embodiment, as a portal, factors into Dr.

Thomas scholarship on the
afterlives of imperialism, which

we went on to ask her about.

Deborah Thomas: Yeah, well, I think
there are very obvious ways in

which the afterlives of imperialism
and slavery redound to the body.

Structurally, symbolically,
representationally, the whole movement

to map out a different sensibility
around cultural identity that was not

grounded in colonial stereotypes was
a movement to value, um, the embodied

practices of Afro-Jamaican people, while
still making them, um, consumable, I

suppose, by, uh, national, audience.

Nevertheless, to value the African
heritage that had been denigrated, um,

during the period of colonial rule.

Denigrated and outlawed, right?

So at the same time, of course,
people never stopped practicing the

things they practice or never stopped
elaborating the beliefs that they had.

So there's this tension always in that
afterlife, I think, um, that Uh, sort

of bursts into the open from time to
time, but, um, is sort of that tension

between the, um, taken for granted,
African underpinnings of Jamaican

Anglophone Caribbean society, which
people like Sylvia Winter and Kamau

Brathwaite felt was the actual basis for
the creativity of Caribbean populations.

Not this kind of creolization
or this hybridization or this

kind of acculturation toward
whiteness or Europeanness, right?

OreOluwa: Building on this
conversation about Kumina, Dr.

Thomas also spoke about the relationship
between spirituality and African

diasporic movement practices.

She explains how dance can unbound the
body and allow the dancer to integrate the

spiritual into their embodied experiences.

Deborah Thomas: Have been thinking
about ontologies of the body and,

uh, how African ontologies, and I'm
using the continental designation

there on purpose, um, tend to
envision the body as, open, right?

Unbounded.

The body is a space,
uh, also for ancestors.

So it makes it temporally unbounded.

Past, present, future can all
coalesce within the body in what

in Jamaica we call Myal, right?

A possession, ancestral
possession, or in other spaces.

a possession by spirit or God or
deity or in Candomblé it would

have been whoever mounts you, you
know, in Haitian Vodou as well.

But that the body is open to that,
which is different from a European

conceptualization of the body, which
is separated, obviously, from the

mind and subordinate to the mind.

So Roberto Strongman writes in
this book, he recently published

called Transcorporeality, I think.

He writes that the real tragedy of the
Atlantic slave trade, while, of course,

it is also the inauguration of plantation
based agriculture, um, grounded in,

um, enslavement, Um, discriminatory
racial practices, et cetera, et cetera.

Um, he says the real tragedy of it was
that it forced, or attempted to force,

a closure onto bodies that had always
been open by shutting down the ability

to maintain these traditions, right,
and to maintain these ritual practices.

And I find that super fertile, you
know, as a way to think about, you

know, Well, on some level, how the
body knows, how the body communicates,

how the body transmits, what it knows.

And so I've been thinking about that
with respect to Kumina, that, you

know, in Myal, the body is unbounded
temporarily and also materially, you know.

You hear all these stories about
what people do when they're in

Myal, or you see them do it.

You know, things that cannot be done
in like ordinary relations of time

and space and cause and effect, like
no way are you swallowing fire and

not burning your mouth, you know,
or no way are you walking on glass

and not cutting your feet, you know,
these things that people actually do.

So in a way, in Myal, then, in that
space of unbounded, The unbounding is

temporal and it's also material, right?

The bodies can do things they can't do
within the sort of normative structures

of modern time and space, right?

And so that's, I think, what
I've been thinking about.

That in a way with the festival, you
know, it's a public ritual practice.

It's a public performance of, of all
the different things, you know, not

just Kumina, but also other drumming
collectives and other traditions like

Jonkonnu and Dinki Mini and Bruckins
and all of the kind of quote folk forms.

That's often what they're called
in educational settings in Jamaica.

Um, like I think what we're trying to do
is create an unbonded space, you know,

to, to create that opening where for
the moment and then we won't know the

effect afterwards, but in the moment
of opening people can be exposed, you

know, to these traditions with them.

To diminish the stigma that's still
sometimes associated with these

traditions, um, and also talk about
something that's going on, you know,

that's important and to, to think
together, to problem solve together

outside of the legislative boundaries
of state institutions, outside of

politics, you know, and so I think
that's what we're, that's the intention,

right, to unbound, you know, the
body for that moment in that space.

OreOluwa: Azsaneé, I remember you
talking about how your training

in ballet has influenced how you
see different movement styles.

Azsaneé: Yeah.

I mean, ballet is obviously from Europe,
and it's wrapped up in notions of European

spirituality, where heaven is above us,
um, and it prioritizes being lifted and

almost floating while you're doing these
really, really demanding movements.

You're attaining this sort of God-like
perfection through discipline.

But with African diasporic movement,
there's more of a focus on being grounded.

There's something spiritually valuable
and being connected with the earth.

OreOluwa: Hmm.

And we talked about the importance
of not only relegating discipline and

rigor to those more European forms
of movement, because these African

diasporic movement practices and
systems are also organized and they

demand skill prowess and dedication.

This isn't something you just wake up.

one day and do because
you think it's cool.

Azsaneé: Absolutely.

Dr.

Thomas gives us an example.

Deborah Thomas: If you think
about like in the case of

Kumina, right, you're born in it.

You know, you're born in
a family that does it.

So, you know, you attend and you
learn, you know, as a kid, you're

sitting on the outside of the circle.

You learn, you watch, you see the
bodies, you internalize the rhythms.

If it is seen, however, it is seen
that you have an aptitude, then you

will be apprenticed to a drummer, to
a dancer, and then you will begin the

long process of learning, you know,
the way that we apprentice in graduate

school and begin the long process
of learning how to read, how to do

research, all of that kind of thing.

But, but of course, it is a discipline
that takes many, many years.

Azsaneé: We closed out the
interview with one of the

questions we ask all of our guests.

What are you grooving to these days?

OreOluwa: And Dr.

Thomas mentioned that her children
influence her thinking and learning

as well as what she's grooving to.

Deborah Thomas: In a way, it's
also what I'm listening to, right?

Marley has playlists, Oliver
has playlists, so in the

car, it's all their music.

So that's, we went to the Daniel
Caesar concert two weeks ago.

Cause Marley, that's, you know,
her favorite, one of her favorites.

Um, which was super fun.

Uh, reading, I just finished,
uh, Sophia Sinclair's How to Say

Babylon, which is devastating.

And I'm really interested in talking
with people in Jamaica about it and how

especially Rastafari are responding.

Um, I also listened to Mary Louise
Kelly's book, It Goes So Fast, which is

about her son's last year in high school,
which is what I'm about to experience.

Um, so just really interesting,
clearly about You know, being a

working mother and all the tradeoffs,
all the decisions, all the times you

weren't there, how that has worked out.

Um, and also, you know, how life
changes for women in middle age and,

um, There were many times reading that
book that I was like, laugh crying out

loud, you know, in my house, walking
down the street, you know, in the car.

I'm sure people thought I was crazy,
like literally laugh crying, you know.

Azsaneé: This episode of Groovin'
Griot was a production of the

Digital Futures Institute at Teachers
College, Columbia University.

It was produced and edited
by me, Azsaneé Truss.

And my cohost, Ore Baddaki.

Our theme music is Unrest by ELPHNT
and can be found on Directory.

Audio.

OreOluwa: You can email
us at groovingriot@gmail.

com.

That's g-r-o-o-v-i-n-g-r-i-o-t at gmail.

com.

And you can continue to listen
to episodes of Groovin' Griot

wherever podcasts are found.

Thanks for groovin' with us.