“There’s a new world coming, and it’s just around the bend…”
When I lived in Los Angeles California in the early 1970s, I had the good fortune to be able to see Nina Simone in concert. She introduced one song by saying, “There are 12 million Black people in this country. I only want 1 million to buy this record.” She began to sing and play the opening lines to the song “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.”
My youngest granddaughter has pale skin and blue eyes; her mother is bi-racial, and her father is Caucasian. When we walk to what Myah calls “Berger Park,” she surveys the cars in the parking lot and will say to me, “There are lots of kids in the park today.” She wants to go to Ellenberger Park to play with those kids, not with her grandfather, her “Clop.” She attaches herself to clots of kids, asking for names and giving hers, occasionally breaking away to tell me that she has found new friends. I see parents and guardians trying to figure out to whom this pale child belongs, and I note the rise of eyebrows when she leaps into my arms.
When I took my first two grandchildren to the malls and stores of their young lives, there was never a question of whether I was — as they say in British police stories — an “appropriate guardian.” I once encouraged them to sing aloud in McDonald’s: “Cool Papa, he failed us! He failed us as a grandfather!” Xavion, the elder of the two, was more reticent, but his sister Imani sang out with exuberance. But I saw no one in the fast-food place turning a raised eyebrow toward the three Black people, two of whom were singing over their food.
Xavion recently returned from his first year at Drexel University; he is studying material science engineering, which my research shows is, “how everything in the world, works.” Imani will be in her second year of high school. She has immersed herself in Korean culture, an outgrowth of her passion for the K-Pop band, BTS. Her school allows for students to have specific and targeted lesson plans, and Imani has presented hers, along with a teacher who has agreed to mentor her. Myah, my third grandchild, will be entering kindergarten soon, where it is hoped that she will continue to master nouns and verbs. Her cousins are setting the bar high for her educational prospects.
Nina Simone’s voice is in my heart. I often listened to a song sung by her. “New World Coming” was written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill and recorded by Cass Elliot in 1969. The song became a hit for “Mama” Cass in 1970. According to producer Steve Bari, it was a pop song “that really kind of (said) something.” Simone covered the song on her 1971 album “Here Comes The Sun,” and I heard her perform it that same year in Los Angeles. Part of the song addresses religious themes, but I never felt the pull of that religiosity when I listened to it, except perhaps that old-time church foot-stomping joy. The fiery energy of hope expressed by the singer always moved me. When I hear her sing, “There’s a new voice calling, and you can hear it if you try,” I hear the voices of Xavion, Imani and Myah, my “Three Gs,” calling for and anticipating a place at the table of life. They have an unabashed expectation of a beautiful world, one that Nina said is:
“Coming in peace, coming in joy, coming in love!”
cjon3acd@att.net