Getting ready for Chosen Few 2025! Post to come later…
House Music! As soon as we hit the parking lot, we could hear it. The beat, uniquely Chicago, so familiar to my ears, so nostalgic to my heart, so necessary to my soul. The rhythm, the bass told you it was time to jack your body. For the most part I left that to the younger generations and true House Heads. But for me it almost immediately became something far greater than the music, I was transported back hundreds, maybe thousands of years, home. A place where every conceivable shade of brown glistened in the hot July sun. A place where every tribe in our nation was united under a groove. The Ethiopian, Fulani, and Dahomey, the Hadzabe, Yoruba, and Zulu, and hundreds of others, the list is so long! We now unite under additional banners and stanchions, Omegas and Alphas, Deltas and AKAs, House Heads and Steppers, Cigar Kings and Queens. Wearing every color under the sun, in the sun.
From the moment we turned on 63rd Street from du Sable Lake Shore Drive, we felt the joy, Black Joy from the people hard at work greeted us and everybody that entered with the smile you give a cousin you hadn’t seen in a while. We got the advantage of seeing a sister from the village (Evanston) who personally escorted us to a premium parking spot. The security checkpoints were merely a formality mandated by the social structure, the only weapons needed were shields to protect us from the heat and our melon to absorb the sun. The music wasn’t solely responsible for the joy but certainly fueled it. The joy started with every smile and greeting from strangers who were family you just hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting yet.
The trek to our spot was long, not due to distance but the inability to go more than 20 paces without a handshake or a hug from a family member, friend, or a brother or sister reppin’ the colors. Walking with my cousin, DJ Gary “Jackmaster” Wallace, was like walking with royalty, did I say 20 paces? It was more like 10 walking with Gary being stopped or stopping to greet someone he knew and introducing me and being met with the same warm enthusiasm. As I watched Gary in his element my joy continued to rise.
In front of the stage the beat and the bass drowned out all conversation and conscious thought, but the body remembers it’s time to jack!
When I finally got to the spot, the tribal tents of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., my joy continued on its upward ascent, greeting each Brother without challenge; in this space and entire park, perpetrators dare not enter. The introduction was on repeat name, chapter, and year you crossed. As Spring “81 Bruhs, Doug and I were among the oldest in the frat and treated as such. Friendship is essential to the soul; no truer words were ever spoken.
The second component which fuels and amplifies is drink. Although it was probably too hot to drink, the “Oil” both royal purple and old gold flowed freely, made from recipes handed down from generation to generation with some regional differences but the effect was still the same.
Finally, the last and arguably the most important, the food. Any time we as a people gather it’s the food. For a nominal fee, we were treated to an all-day feast, brought in and grilled by our outstanding Brother Jean Claude, restaurateur and owner of Lior’s Café a Haitian Restaurant on the Southside of Chicago. The food never stopped coming, my only regret was that I couldn’t eat as much as I used to but would have gladly paid double. The setout included chicken, ribs, fried fish and a host of sides along with an open bar which I only got ice because the oil was following all day too.
All this to say Black Joy! Forty Thousand plus Black people together in ninety-degree weather brought together by the music but more importantly, the common bond of our people Blackness. There was no drama, voices raised only to be heard above the beat, screams from the joy of seeing an old friend, and the chants from the crowd.
As I sat, walked, ate and drank (and maybe jacked my body for 30 seconds) it came to me that this is what Tulsa was like before the massacre, this is what Rosewood could have been, this is Africa before it was called Africa, before them…
Black Joy is not manufactured, you can’t fake it, but it’s also infectious AF. The symptoms manifest as a sense of true freedom, euphoria, and unapologetic Blackness and it’s the best feeling there is!
Thanks Chosen Few!
