Traditions: Ohio Heritage Fellows; 301; Linda Thomas Jones interview, part 2 of 4

I was a very artistic child. Being raised almost like an only child, I spent a lot of time by myself. Um, and I was either reading or drawing pictures or writing poetry. And, in fact, I received a scholarship to Cooper School of Art when I was 13 years old.

Q:

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LINDA: I grew up in Cleveland. I was born in Georgia, brought here by my grandmother when I was five years old. I attended three, no, 10 different elementary schools and three junior high schools and finally one high school, East Tech and that's where I graduated from.

Q:

LINDA: Well, that was all in my younger years when I was small, um, during elementary school, junior high school. Once I got into college through, um, uh, a scholarship and grants from, um,

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Um, I went to Case Western Reserve, I was one of the first Upward Bound recipients and I went to Case Western Reserve, had to take a gym class and the gym class happened to be creative movement or dance or something like that and I said, well, I don't want to play tennis, I don't do golf, I don't swim so I'll take this dance class. I took the dance class and the day after the dance class I could barely walk, I was in so much pain and I said, I don't know if I can do this again but I'd already signed up for it. So, I kept going and I started to really like it and ended up in the dance company and then I... one day I went to the art museum and they were playing drums around the art museum, you know, it was during the hippie time and I was a hippie, of course, and I asked this person if I could play their drum and they said, sure. And, it was love at first hit. And, so I kept going back and then one day in dance class I asked my dance teacher, Kathy Karapedies, I said, can I play for the dance class cause I'm a drummer? And, she said, well sure. And, so I got my drum out and I started just playing any old thing and she stopped me and I was so hurt. She said, oh no, no, no stop. And, she gave me one of those little dancers drums with the mallet and she said, just play this, bing, boom, boom, and I'm going, I can play that all day long and had to in all of her classes. It was the greatest gift she could have given me because if you can play on the pulse you can play music with anybody, I don't care what kind of music it is, if you can do that consistently then you're fine. And, so that started it and then one day a woman named Catherine Dunham came to visit Case and she brought a drummer with her from Cinnadog (SP?) named Morchow (SP?). That was the first time I heard, heard real African drums in person and felt that energy and after the class Miss Dunham said, come here and she whispered in my ear, this is your culture, this is what you need to be studying as opposed to what I was doing, which was modern dance. Shortly after that I left school, moved to New York City and played drums for all kinds of modern dance companies, Erick Hawkins, Alvin Ailey and just travelled all over just playing drums and met up with other female drummers there, Edwina Lee Tyler and, uh, Jonah Ashley, all those folks and, uh, Deborah McGee. These are all first wave drummers, female drummers and I met up with them and we started to play together and then I came back to Cleveland.

Q:

LINDA: Because I knew I was different, my whole life I've known I was, I was different. Um, I didn't feel one way or the other, the adjustment was in language and in culture because of the neighborhoods I'd been brought up in, my language was a particular language and the way I spoke was a particular language and my dance teacher slowly started to have me change the way that I spoke and once again that was another gift because I became a world person as opposed someone from the neighborhood.

Q:

LINDA: It was just drums. It was like in the 60's now you have to remember this, in the 60's they were having every Sunday happenings around the lagoon and everybody played drums, they danced and sang and expressed free love and, you know, it was just a wonderful, wonderful time.

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LINDA: In, in Ghana.

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LINDA: I was doing some workshops for the Gustaup Institute in University Circle and, um, I'd done maybe a couple of 'em and then I did a third one and at the end of the third one, they said, um, have you ever been to Africa? And, I said, no. I said, but I really would like to go one day. So, I continued to pack up my drums and get ready to leave and I was watching them kinda huddling up and talking with each other and then they came back and they said, well, we decided we'd like to send you to Africa. And, I said, to them, I said, don't, don't play with me and they said, no, we really think you need to go and so you figure out where you want to go and we'll pay for everything. And, so I decided to go to Ghana because it was English speaking and so for my first trip to Africa I wanted to be able to at least, uh, communicate with the folks. And, I went by myself and I went to the University of Lagos and studied, uh, drumming and some dance, not so much dance but drumming.

Q:

LINDA: I learned a lot about my her story. I very seldom use the other word when talking about myself. Um, I had a painful experience there that, there was a young man that was a teacher and there was a big room that they had, um, off the street, it was like a big barn, it had double doors and one day in my off time I was walking by and I saw these school children peeking into this room, watching drummers and dancers and so I peeked in too and there was a group of maybe about 20 Caucasians taking the drum class and dance class and when the teacher who is the man saw me looking into the room he said, someone close that door and so he closed the door in my face. And, just before I left, I was there for the whole summer, I saw him again and he said, Madame I need to apologize to you. I said, for what? He said, I've been working in a capitalistic society for so long, I should have never closed the door in your face but these were German students and they were paying me $900 dollars apiece to take the class, so I couldn't let you just look in because you were not paying. And, so I said, um, well, it's done now and I'm leaving, there's nothing you can do to make up for this. And, she said, I really do need to apologize because of some of our ancestors that sold you families into slavery and then on top of that then I didn't let you study. So, that was the painful experience. The nice experience was most of the time I had dressed traditionally while I was there and, um, I was living with a woman whose husband was an ex-professor and so I was in her house and she used to take me in to town and introduce me as her American daughter. And, she ended, uh, she went to visit her friend who had this beautiful garden, beautiful home and we were sitting and I hadn't said anything, I was just looking and then finally I said something and the woman said, ah, African-American? I said, yes, oh if you had not said anything I would have thought you were from Ghana, you look like my auntie. So, that was a wonderful feeling because most of us who are African-Americans have no idea where we come from, none whatsoever. So, I have claimed all of Africa as, as my home, so that was the beautiful piece that happened while I was there.

Q:

LINDA: I brought back the rhythms. I brought back the fact that I had actually been to Africa because now when I go into schools I ask children starting at like kindergarten all the way up to 12th grade, do they have microwave ovens in Africa? And, even at 18 years old in 2018 they all say no. Do the kids wear blue jeans and tennis shoes in Africa? No. So, by me being there, seeing the apartment buildings and the movie theatres and, and all of that which is modern Africa as well as seeing traditional Africa where they do things the same way their ancestors did. I was able to come back and be an eye witness and say, they have everything we have here, you just don't know about it because they don't televise it, they only talk about what they call primitive Africa or traditional Africa. So, I bring back and bring this to the Children and say, people that look like you actually have some of the same technology that we have here so you don't have to be ashamed of having this color skin just because every time you see somebody on T.V. that looks like you is either poor or starving or dying.

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LINDA: At first they're very shocked because, um, as soon as I ask them about Africa and the microwave, I'll turn around and I'll say, well, um, how do you know that they don't have... well, we've never been there. I said, uh, do they have microwave ovens in England? Oh, yeah. Ital? Yeah. Germany? So, the effect is that now they know so they can pass it on to somebody else including their parents. Often times the parents don't even know, so that's the gift I can bring based on what I did.

Q:

LINDA: Well, I'm gonna back up a little bit because when I first started drumming especially the African- American males would always say, women in Africa do not drum. And, once again I said, well, have you ever been to Africa? And, they say, well, no. I said, well how do you know women in Africa don't drum? Well, this other brother told me that women in Africa don't drum. I said, well until I have gone or you have gone to every village on the continent of Africa you cannot say that women in Africa don't drum. And, so when I got to New York, um, some of the women had been playing before, it was like a parallel universe. We were playing we just didn't know about each other. Uh, there's a woman named Bobbie Hall who had been drumming way... way before I started and is still drumming. Uh, another woman named Isamae (SP?)Andrews is probably one of the first female drummers in the United States and she taught some of the males how to drum especially in the religious community, uh, as far as the Yoruba people are concerned in that tradition. So, um, yeah, they had been playing but we had been playing in little pockets and I was the new kid on the block cause they had been playing together up in New York with Nurue Daffani (SP?) all those had been playing together and I was the new kid on the block feeling like a country bumpkin coming into New York City with the big girls. And, they challenged me, they said, play. And, I had to play by myself and if it wasn't good enough they would have just said, okay, that's nice but instead they all started pulling their drums out and we all played together, rhythms that we had not studied from anybody, we just knew the rhythms and we played together.

Q:

LINDA: Affirming that I was on the right track, that I should continue to play, that, uh, I should continue to practice on my own, teach myself, let the (TRUCK SOUND) drum teach me...

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It was wonderful, you know, I was accepted, there was no friction at all. They just totally accepted me. And, we still talk, we still play together, all these years later we're still in communication with each other. I wish somebody would do a documentary on all of us because some of the women have cancer, some are very sick, they... we're getting older and in a minute we'll transition and none of these young female drummers will know anything about us at all and that would be a travesty.

Q:

LINDA: I just started asking people, I found a little small apartment that I could live in and (TRUCK SOUND) share it with people and, uh, because I was a dancer already, Eric Hawkins had already been to Cleveland and he was familiar with me so I asked if I could play for his classes. I played for those classes then somebody told me about Alvin Ailey, I went to his studio and he said, sure come on in. And, then I met a man named Chuck Davis and he had a class at the Church of the Masters in New York. And, he was teaching African dance, he just transitioned about a year ago but I walked into this room and there must have been about 75, 80 people there all dressed in African clothing, little children running around with African clothing on, the drumming going, whole families there and I walked in with my drum and I was gonna play and met the... women in this class don't play, here's a bell you can play, here's a shekere that you can play. So, I played the shekere, I played the (TRUCK SOUND) bell.

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So, I played the shekere, I played the bell and then one day I brought my drum anyway and I noticed that all the males were waiting for the real African dance to start but nobody was playing for Chuck Davis' warm-ups. That was my specialty after being at Case was playing for dancers warm-ups and so I asked him, I said, can I play for your warm-ups? He said, sure. And, I started playing, I played until I left New York for his classes. Um, then when he was travelling he would call me up, uh, I travelled with him to various colleges and performed with him. So...

Q:

LINDA: I came back to Cleveland expecting my first child. I decided I did not want to have a baby in New York, uh, because I had, an unfortunate incident where in the winter time I slipped and fell and broke my ankle not too far from my house and nobody stopped to help me. Uh, my boot ended up being frozen to the ground, a Nigerian man came by about 20 minutes later and he says, oh sister what's wrong? I said, I think I broke my ankle. He picked me up put me on his back, took 'em to his friend's house, they put me in the car and drove me to the hospital and after that experience I said, people are just not very friendly here, I need to not stay here, I need to not have a baby here. So, I came back and, um, there was a gentleman named Bill Wingfield who was teaching African dance and drumming here in Cleveland and he was at Karamu House but he had been gone for a while so there was this opening and I met this woman named Marjorie Whitt-Johnson who took the first Karamu Dance Company to the World's Fair in the early 1930's. I met her and we developed the Imani African-American Dance Company in 1980. Imani means faith and that's my daughter's name. And, so I saw this, this need for the culture here in, uh, in Cleveland and I started and I ran it for about 11 years, had big classes, sometimes a 100 people in the class.

Q:

LINDA: I was still at Case and in fact I had met Marjorie before I left to do any of these things and I was talking to her and she said, uh, we need to do something with these school children, they don't know the culture. And, she had the contacts, you know, how to contact people and I did my first class over at Done Elementary School. I was probably 19 years old. I looked like one of the kids, uh, little boys I had a short afro, I was one of the first people in Cleveland to have an afro and they gave me a group of what they called incorrigible little boys and there was about six of 'em. They were high energy kids and so what I did was they gave me this room with desks in it, I had the children push all the desks back, I had them take their shirts off, I had them take their shoes and socks off, and I had them just run, just run, go all over the room, make all the noise you want, scream, all of that. And, then I would sit and talk with them. And, then I would play with them and we had to do a showing after about three or four weeks and when the parents and the teachers came into watch these boys, they were amazed, they were totally focused, they work well together with each other, they danced, they played drums, it was just beautiful. So, that was my first experience, uh, with doing that type of thing and I knew it was working.

Q:

LINDA: I'm leaving a footprint and the footprint that I'm leaving is the arts heal and save, that's the main thing, that a person's culture, knowing who they are will save them also. If a child doesn't really know who they are, they're just like floundering out here. And, so with this culture being forced on us, a different type of culture including having our language taken away, the way we like to dress, our music, even how we worship was taken away and so you have a lot of confused spirits out here, adults and children. So, what I do is I give them a way to find out who they are also connect them with their ancestors because without them we would not be here. Um, give them a real historical... a historical point of slavery, most people do not know where they got their last names from, going back only a few generations, beyond that they don't know. And, so I actively in a classroom even in a juvenile justice center with all these young males that are in there for years, I actually show them and have them experience what it was like for their parents or parents of a young person that's being sold to a plantation owned my Mr. Thomas. They actually feel it and I said, well how do you think their father feels knowing that he can’t protect his child from being sold to somebody else and given a different name? (TRUCK SOUND) And, that anger and that frustration stays... with... within the DNA, it doesn't go away but if they're aware of it they can make better decisions about how to live their lives.

Q:

LINDA: Drumming is, is energetic, it has an energy to it and, um, when they play the drum and when they play together, um, I really wish you could be here on Saturday because that's when my young men will be per... playing and the difference that's making into all of this is just amazing. But, when they play together they understand that they have to cooperate with each other. They also understand that they have to take responsibility for the part they play in that rhythm. So, it's a joint thing, I'm responsible for what I do but I'm also responsible to the group. They also understand that they can't move forward without each other, so if one is struggling they have to figure out a way to help that struggling one to come into the fold. The one that's struggling knows that they have to put forth all their effort, all their thoughts, focus and concentration to do their part. And, this carries on from in the room with the drums out into society. The other thing is, I don't teach with numbers, I teach with words (TRUCK SOUND). One of the ...

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I don't teach with numbers, I... RESTART

So, um, I don't teach with numbers cause numbers are just numbers. I teach with words. For instance, there's one thing that I end all the classes with and that phrase is I like you, you like me and I like you, you like me and I like you, you like me because when I go into the schools I hear a lot of, I can't stand you! Get away from me! Why you looking at me! I don't hear, I like you. So, by the time they leave my class they're singing as they're putting chairs away, I like you, you like me and I... and, they go down the hallway, I like you, you like me, that sets up a whole different energy in the school itself that they're not even, uh, realizing because they're bombarded all day every day with some kind of music or noise that they repeat over and over in their heads and 99 percent of is not positive and it's hurtful and so if I can put those words into their heads and have them continue to repeat that and hear that at night when they're sleeping it changes the psyche, I don't care what anybody says, it works.

Q:

LINDA: All forms of art are important to everybody. If you would just think about what this world would be with... uh, like without music, dance and visual arts, it would be nothing, absolutely nothing. Whether people want to admit it or not businesses rely on the arts to sell their products, okay. So, the arts is extremely important to not only the artists cause a lot of times we do our art without pay because that's how important for us to do the art but we still have to eat so we do have (TRUCK NOISE)

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We do have to charge but arts is important to the entire world.

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LINDA: The fact that I am completing my assignment here on this planet. My assignment is to encourage, to teach, fortify, teach how to love, um, heal, that's my assignment and as long as I have the ability to do that and have the support from the community, uh, to do that, that's what I do. No matter what, no matter how tired I am, how frustrated I am, I have to show up because that's my assignment.