Linda Thomas Jones/Mama Fasi is amost gifted performing artist and master teacher. She is a great teaching artist because she focuses on the whole person-she doesn't just teach how to make music with African drums, she teaches self-respect, generosity 'kindness and compassion.
This article is about following your path no matter what.
Iyalorisha omi oni
Otun Iya
Iyanifa Fasi Irunsewe Olomo
Her Eminence High Chief Mirioma
Yeye ala aje agbaye
Woman of spirit, skin, wood, and iron – Destiny will not be denied
Sometimes it's hard to know where to begin. To know what perspective to write from; what's important to tell or what's too private to speak. Should I write from the perspective of a black girl born in 1950 to a fourteen-year-old mother in the Deep South?
I could also write from the perspective of being one of the first female African drummers in the United States of America.
Should I write from the perspective of an African person in captivity in the United States? Then again, it might be more interesting to write from the perspective of a spiritual woman who is not a Christian but hears her ancestors when they speak.
Perhaps it would be more entertaining if I wrote from the perspective of a person who loved freely without restraint. Maybe I should write my story from the perspective of a widow left with two small children to take care of after her husband was murdered.
Should I speak from the viewpoint of the little girl who was molested multiple times beginning at age six. She was even raped at gunpoint.
The story might also be told from the perspective of a young girl raised between her father, his different wives, and his mother, a grandmother who adored her.
If I speak from all these perspectives, I sometimes marvel at the fact that I have ended up living right where I wanted to live, doing what I wanted to do. I even managed to make my way to Africa. I truly believe that destiny will never be denied.
Standing on a red dirt road in Ghana, West Africa brings back memories of standing on the same kind of road in Georgia as a small child. In both places the dirt was red, the color of blood. I was listening to the rhythm of the birds in the trees and the voices of the men singing in the distant woods.
I heard the repetitive rhythm as their axes hit the tree that they were collectively chopping down. The clanging of the metal cowbells as the herd of cows came down the road made their own rhythm. These memories became the foundation of how I saw and heard my entire world for the rest of my life. I realize now that everything is about rhythm. To create a human being, there must be a rhythm between a man and a woman. This rhythm becomes the foundation for that new life.
The beginning
Baby Linda Thomas
I was born to a fourteen-year-old mother (Sally Mae Taylor) in Dooly County, Georgia. It was a difficult life for my mother, her siblings, and my grandmother (Georgia Mae Rackley) who had eleven children, and three sets of twins including my mother who had a twin who passed away. It was a hard farming life.
My mother Sallie Mae Taylor
I was told that because my mother was so young when she had me, my grandmother did not want me to stay with her. She said that because if my mother had other children, I would be the outside child and treated differently, my grandmother didn’t want that for me.
At the age of around one and a half, my father's mother (Anna Rebecca) came to get me.
Grandmother Anna Rebecca Mathis
She said when she saw me, I was standing by the side of the red dirt road all by myself. My hair looked as if it had not been combed for weeks, my clothes were dirty, and I had a small piece of bread in my hand. She put me in her car and took me to live with her and my grandfather. It was said that my grandfather didn't want me to live with them. However, somehow my grandmother was able to get him to change his mind.
My grandfather Thomas Henry (TH) Thomas
My grandparents lived in what was basically a shack with very little furniture and it always smelled like burning wood. It was not always a good place to live because my grandfather would often beat my grandmother. I remember the day my grandmother gave me my first pair of new shoes. I can see them so vividly; they were white sandals with straps in a small white box. Later that evening it was dark, and a fire was burning. My grandparents got into an argument that turned into a physical altercation. I watched the shadows of my grandparents fighting with each other, things being knocked over and loud shouting. The light from the fireplace and oil lantern made them look like giant creatures clawing at and hitting each other. I was afraid they would damage my shoes, so I grabbed the little box and ran quickly to sit under a small table in a corner, clutching to my chest. This is one of my earliest memories as a child.
I also remember that my grandfather didn’t want me to sleep between him and my grandmother. I was forced to sleep on the outside wall with gaps in the wooden planks. When winter came there would be moisture and ice on the inside wall where I slept. Sometimes in the morning when I woke up, my clothes would be stuck to the frozen wall.
My father was in the Army during this time. When he came home from the service, he moved to Cleveland, Ohio and decided that my grandmother and I should come there to live with my uncle, Theodore Mathis, and his wife.
My father David Solomon Thomas
It was a very small two-bedroom apartment above a barber shop on Kinsman Road in Cleveland, Ohio. My uncle was a war veteran and I'm sure he had PTSD that was never diagnosed. He never received any counseling for it. There were times when he would have bouts of anger. When this happened, especially if he had been drinking, he would take it out on everybody in the house. I remember one night. He had gone out drinking and when he came home, we were all in bed sleeping. He came crashing through the door wide-eyed, drooling, and yelling for everybody to get up. It was so frightening for me as a small child and brought back memories of my grandparents' fighting. We all came out of our rooms rubbing our eyes and trying to understand what was going on. Meanwhile, he was in the kitchen staggering around and knocking things over. Suddenly without warning he took out his gun, started waving it around and then shot two bullets into the ceiling. Thank goodness nobody lived above us. Then he proceeded to pass out and we were able to go back to bed.
Uncle ”Theodore” Ted Mathis
We lived like that for a while until one day my grandmother and I came home, and my uncle had changed the locks, and we couldn't get in. Now we had to find a place to live and a way to make some money quickly. However, because my grandmother had only gone to the fourth grade in school, and only done farm work, it was going to be difficult to find what we needed.
As chance would have it, (destiny). That very day we met a lady walking down the street. She told us she was working at Lakeside Hospital in housekeeping. She was a small frail, brown-skinned woman who had a nervous stutter and a twitch in one eye. Her name was Lulabelle. She was from Alabama and had two boys who needed to be taken care of while she was at work.
My grandmother (on the left) and Ms. Lula Bell
She also needed someone to do the washing and the cooking. That very day my grandmother and I started to work for Miss Lula Bell Williams. I was working too, and the boys and I did the laundry together. My grandmother would put all our dirty clothes in the bathtub and fill it up with water and washing powder. We thought it was fun to march and jump up and down on the clothes. We didn’t think of it as work but over the next couple of years Miss. Lulabelle had two more babies. By the time my grandmother stopped working for her, she had five boys and they considered me to be their only sister.
Because her family had gotten larger, and her husband was beginning to complain about so many people in the house. It was time for us to move on. The next place we lived was only a couple of doors down from Miss Lulabelle’s. It was with a lady who was legally blind. We moved in with her and once again, my grandmother became a housekeeper in return for housing and a small amount of money. We had a tiny room with a window that faced out onto the street. Because the lady was blind, she was also easily frightened by sudden sounds. When we moved in, it was with the understanding that I would not be able to run around, especially in the evening. My grandmother would devise games and things for me to do to keep me quiet. As a three-year-old, that was not easy to do. So, what would we do in the evening before it was bedtime? We would sit by the window, and we would look at cars and play something that we named the car game. I would see a car and I would say that's my car, that’s my blue car. Then my grandmother would say, “OK, well the next car is going to be mine. See that car there, that's my red car”, and of course, we had to do all of this in a whisper keeping my little giggles muffled: no jumping up and down, no screaming, and no celebration.
We did that so that we wouldn't disturb or frighten, the woman. We stayed with her until I was five years old. At this time, we were living on a street called Rawlings and there was a school nearby. On the first day of school, there were so many children running around, screaming and laughing. The area around the school was covered with glass from broken wine bottles. At the back entrance to the school, there were about four steps. I was standing on the top step when someone pushed me and I fell down the steps, landing on my back. I immediately started crying and screaming. But the teacher didn't pay any attention to me because there was so much noise going on around her. As the children fled into the building, I pulled myself up and followed. I was still screaming and crying when the teacher pushed me on my back and said stop all that noise. But when she pulled her hand away, it was full of blood. A shard of glass had pierced my back just under my right shoulder blade. Because it was the first day the teacher wasn't sure who I belonged to. Thank goodness, one of the children knew where I lived, and took me to my grandmother. I didn't go to the hospital; my grandmother just cleaned it up with alcohol and hydrogen peroxide. I still have a scar on my back to this day.
That is one of my physical scars. However, many emotional, mental, and physiological ones are not visible. Amazingly, I have ended up living in West Africa with four generations of my family. There are more chapters to my story that I will share later. However, I wanted to share a glimpse as to what saved my life, my sanity set me on my destined path.
It all started at Case Western University where I was able to go because of my science teacher Mr. Williams. He saw something in me despite my low self-esteem, insecurities secretary. However, one day, he said to me, “How would you like to go to college”? Of course, I laughed at him, because I didn’t have any money and my father had already told me he was not going to financially support me in any way in terms of going to college. Mr. Williams then told me about a program called Upward Bound. This program provided selected students who are still in high school, the opportunity to spend the summer on a college campus in preparation to attend college. I was in the first Upward Bound Program in 1969. I arrived at Case Western Reserve with very little money, very few pieces of clothes, and no books. But somehow, I was able to make it for three years!
I met a wonderful woman named Kathryn Karipides who was my dance teacher. She was a tiny Greek woman who was so thin you could almost see her bones and every muscle. Meeting her changed my entire life because she took me as I was, without judgment she also introduced me to all types of music including classical and experimental. Another woman who made a profound impact on my life was Ms. Kathrine Dunham She was a movie star, spiritualist, and cultural dancer. I had never seen her style of dancing before. The drummer she brought with her played the drum and I had never heard real African drums before. When I heard him play something in me was awakened, so I began looking for that sound again after they left. One day I was at the Art Museum and saw some people playing all kinds of drums. There were extra drums, so I started playing one. The feeling was amazing, I had found a home. A couple of months later I was raped at gunpoint in my off-campus apartment. As a result of this incident and all the previous abuse I had suffered, I was devastated and went into a deep depression, Eventually, I stopped going to class, didn’t go back to the apartment, and gave up. However, two ladies from the dance class (Sondra Radcliffe and Jane Godfrey) heard about what happened to me. Both were therapists who took me to live with them for some time. While living with them I was able to begin the healing process, mentally and physically. I soon went back to drumming; I even bought my own drum, because the men didn't want me to play theirs. While I was playing, I began noticing how people reacted to my drumming. I saw that they smiled, started dancing, and said my drum was talking to them. So, I knew my true calling was to be a drummer. To this day, I continue to teach around the world and still get the same responses, even at the age of seventy-three. I say to you that others may not understand what you're trying to do or why you're trying to do it. However, it’s your path and your journey.
My motto is “Destiny Will Not Be Denied” If we follow the call of our ancestors without fear.
Stay tuned for more.
Linda Thomas Jones, Performing Artist and Master Teacher
When you attend a workshop /class with Mama Fasi everybody plays! Her mantra ever since I have known her has been love, respect and reciprocity – the mantra has guided her success in working with students in all seasons of life – children through elders. One of her most successful programs is girls and grandma drumming together. It is an intergenerational class and includes four-year-old girls through ninety-five-year-old great-great-great grandmothers.
