My voice is a part of my body
Spin
Inside the Creation Stories of Dancing Mother
My voice is a part of my body
by Mother Mother Binahkaye Joy
Greta Mendez told me something I’ve never forgotten. She is an artist I met in 2010 when I was in Trinidad for a dance residency. For years I had forgotten Greta’s name, even though I always shared what she taught me about my voice. I had the honor of participating in her guest artist workshops that she led at the Trinidad Theatre Workshop. I was finding the vocal warmups to be very challenging. Feeling frustrated and self-conscious, I said that I’m more of a dancer than a singer. And then Greta paused the exercise, and told us all: “the voice is a part of the body.”
It was a profound moment for me, and it initiated a new way of moving through my dance practices. My voice was no longer something I could think of as being separate from my movements. I am one system, one body, of expression.
Something opened up for me with Greta’s offering. I thought of the countless times I had stood in front of a room full of shy folks who were reluctant to move their bodies with me. In my role as movement facilitator, I was undeterred by their ambivalence and I gently encouraged them to trust their bodies, to see the beauty in their movements—no matter how big or small, how fancy or simple—and to feel the joy of the movements coming from their bodies.
So I had to now apply that same practice to using my voice. I didn’t get to not sing because I didn’t think my voice was good enough. Realizing my voice was a part of my dance was like discovering a new limb. I suddenly had so much more to play with, to move with, to create with.
Now I sing all the time, and I write songs that I sing over and over while I am working through lyrics. My children have learned my songs, and sing along with me (when they’re not begging me to please stop singing that same song!). When a song is coming to me, I have to sing it full out until it is embedded in me, and makes room for more creations within me. It’s like I’m trying to stretch something on the inside, and I can’t access it fully until I sing this particular song, and sing it for as long as necessary for the vibrational medicine of the song to take root and become a part of my creation frequency. The more I explore the singing majesties, the more I understand why I sing, and that singing is one of my most activating pathways to get deep into my movements.
This round of the Open Studio, Take Me to the Water, was activated by singing the freedom script (my language for negro spiritual), Take Me to the Water to be Baptized. I reimagined the original verses and wrote all new lyrics for Take Me to the Water to be Revived. It’s the foundational hymn for an emerging saltwater ringshout and movement processional. When I sing I see the women dancing this piece with me one day. We are dressed in all white, carrying huge baskets on our heads. Our children run alongside us, escorting us to the water. We sway, and rock, and dip as we sing, moving ever slowly, onwards to the water. Our processional is a preparatory movement for ritual and ceremony and healing.
When I sing it’s all real. Everything comes to me where I’m singing. So I keep singing.
When I’m singing I’m dreaming, visioning, mapping. My blood and bones and muscles are warmed by the tones, and rhythms, and melodies of the music. I sing when I am cooking, changing diapers, waiting for the bus. I sing when I am in the dark, when I am too tired to stand, when I feel alone. Ever since discovering the voice as a part of my body, my movements have grown so much. I experience my life as a dance even more. When my feet, hips, limbs, and torso are quiet, my voice can carry the movement. I feel such gratitude for that long-ago moment at Greta’s workshop and to be moving all these years with this knowing. Thank you, beautiful Greta Mendez!
Photos: Screen stills from recording of Mother Mother performing BootyMa Makes the Sunrise, where she sang and got the audience to sing along as part of the opening of her performance, in New York City, 2012.
