While I was Dreaming

It was early Spring 2020 during lockdown when the fantasy aspect of MELIOR Opus Griot expanded further in my mind, while I was dreaming.

Although the concept of this aquatic odyssey first surfaced in my imagination at the age of three, the storyline evolved over the following sixty years of my life.

The southern states of the USA in those days segregated people by skin colour. Those with darker skin (Negroes, coloured-folk, black, brown, red or yellow) were banned from the beach, especially in the daytime when people considered ‘white’ populated the space.

It was when I started attending schools with children of European descent that I first heard that people of African descent were unable to swim because of their body structure. It was a nonsensical notion to me, as several of my kinfolk could swim quite well.

My Cousin Gwen used to high dive into the swimming pool at Houston’s Finnigan Park, a neighbourhood recreational centre near to where we grew up in the 1960s. Cousin Gwen was at one in the deep end of the water. Most of my brothers and uncles were also natural swimmers. Whilst hair maintenance kept many of my women family members from swimming, those with hair that was easier to manage, like Cousin Gwen and Auntie Rita, would be the first in, and last out, of the water. Cousin Gwen preferred the swimming pool. Auntie Rita liked the open water, and it was her introduction to the push and pull of the waves that stayed with me.

Skills are developed through having access to learning and application. My paternal Grandmother Alberta was a natural Horserider. She grew up on a farm as a sharecropper in the early 1900s. Her Grandmother was a live-in concubine to a French-American shipping tycoon. He gifted his Granddaughter, my Grandmother, a thoroughbred to ride after her daily work. Whilst she was not a formally-trained equestrian, my Grandmother was a knowledgeable horse person by virtue of riding her horse every sunset, except on Sundays, across the fields and near the riverbanks as a child in Louisiana.

When I started riding in my early 40s, it was apparent that I had inherited my Grandmother’s affinity for the sport. Like my Grandmother, albeit in different circumstances, I had the benefit of being in the vicinity of horses. The colour of our skin had nothing to do with our ability to ride horses. We simply had access to horses.

It’s the same thing with swimming. Or composing an Opera. My paternal Auntie Betty Faye was a classically trained Juilliard Opera singer as well as a much sought after Gospel singer active during the 1960s Civil Rights movement. It was her blending of Gospel and Classical singing styles that inspired me to combine different genres for this blended-roots Opera. Both swimming and Opera are sometimes falsely viewed as exclusive to people of European descent. When a person from a different culture excels in these fields, it is claimed that they are an exception to the rule. According to this false theory, only those of a certain lineage and skin colour are capable of progressing in certain areas. Those with this belief dismiss the fact that having access to pursue these activities is the reason for the proficiency in them.

When I started open water swimming in earnest at the age of 55, it was to repair an injury sustained while riding. To begin with, my swimming technique was poor, but what I had going for me was my instinct for floating in the water, a skill taught to me when I was three years old. Contrary to the falsehood that dark-skinned people are unable to float due to their musculature, floating is what feels the most natural to me when I’m in the Sea. Years of training have improved my freestyle stroke, thanks to the easy access I have to the ocean off the South Devon coast, close to where I now live.

Similarly, my University of Southern California Thornton School of Music scholarship in the early 1980s to study music education and classical voice, along with orchestration and composition, plus ear training, as well as scoring and chord chart notation, provides me with the skills to create an Opera, albeit in my own unorthodox way. This new approach is intentional. After spending years of staying in my designated lane, excluded from expanding my creative expressions, this blended-roots Opera is set to pave roads for future generations, giving them a platform to build their own type of dramatic music storytelling expressions.

After falling asleep on the couch in my Surrey home that early Spring day in 2020, weary, like many, from the trauma caused by the pandemic, I dreamt of MELIOR and how Cassie, my alter ego and the main character in the story, was rescued by a legendary ‘Alkebulan’ (African) Mermaid. In those first few moments, as I was waking up from the dream, I was still in that hazy atmosphere, imagining that what I had dreamt, had actually happened. I believed that I really did get lost at Sea, that my family mourned me, that a Chocolate Mermaid rescued me, and that I returned to my paternal Grandparents’ home on the ninth day. I pondered why my relatives neglected to tell me what I thought was true. A few moments later I was fully awake and realised that the seafloor society rescue was but a dream. What this dreamscape did was make my fantasy narrative very real to me, enabling me to deliver a relatable story about my MELIOR Opus Griot Voyage.

With support from Hall for Cornwall, Arts Council England and Falmouth University’s Academy of Music and Theatre Arts (AMATA), I have delivered a vision that began in my mind over sixty years ago and was brought to fruition in a November 2022 preview performance at the Cornwall Playhouse in Truro.

While I was dreaming, a reality formed.