An uncle said laughingly, that the memory of it was in the boy’s genes. But he was not really telling a joke. It was genetic, like the contours rounding out the laugh that came from the older man’s mouth as he watched. Laughter that said, you can’t stop rain from falling or the moon from appearing and posing in the dark. And the child was like the stars that clustered themselves around the moon, with no concrete explanation, only that it just happened naturally. He touched the drum as if he knew it, and a thousand souls delighted behind the screens to the other dimensions. He hit the drum and could not understand that he was replicating a rhythm that had long been written for him, beating out concepts too deep for even his guardians to comprehend. Somewhere in the spiritual spectrum, women were gyrating in a circle, spinning their hips, leaning back, and working their shoulders to the ground. The men crouched very low before leaping out into the air.

Photography by Ian N'Kosi Joseph. Words by Kwesi Ako Dash. © 2010