Wahru - When a Teacher becomes an Ancestress

Wahru Cleveland, here with us so recently in North America, died on Nov 13, 2022 in her home community of Ohio, USA. She is being mourned deeply here by so many who have had the fortune to be family, friends, sisters, students of her drumming circles and her activism toward freedom for all, as a black lesbian community activist and teacher. It is a strange and sorrowful time, as many of us have experienced, to lose a beloved. When such a teacher, a leader, a woman who created such change in so many lives leaves us for the spirit world it is through our memories and stories that we keep such cherished people and their work known.

I had the very special chance to meet Wahru this past summer. I was camping for part of the summer in Michigan, this land where for years women have met, sung and danced, held workshops with so many discussions, gathering our strength for all we do in the outside world. We do work shifts to keep things running smoothly. Some of us join the work crew and work regularly. This was my first time on the crew driving a golf cart, taking women across the land, wherever they needed to go. I was told that a lead drummer would need help unloading her drums, brought for a circle of women eager to learn. This was how I met Wahru Cleveland. 

My work was done when she called us to begin. I had planned to sit back, possibly dance on the side if it seemed appropriate, dance being a deep passion of mine and the way I stay strong. Instead she pressed a bass drum in my hands and nodded to an empty chair in the circle. My first lesson on a bass drum. If you love to dance to the drums as I do, it is important to know at least some basic drumming. I felt honoured. After a short time there were more women than drums, and dancers were invited to join in. I handed my drum to a woman just arriving, and entered the circle as the dancer that I am. 

In my most usual dance, my favourite dance that centres my energy and strength for what I do with my life, dancers are called to demonstrate their strengths, creativity and ability to protect their communities. I began to learn this dance on this same land from Qween Hollins some years ago. 

Wahru saw how deeply I love this dance and invited me to dance in the evening stage performance. As I entered the circle that evening for the rehearsal, she switched to a different rhythm, a rhythm unfamiliar to me. Instead of the dance of the warrior, the protector, this was a rhythm for slow determined movement, movement not memorized. I stopped short, uncertain. She left her drum and entered the circle with me, wide wicked and loving smile, showing me the way to this new dance, the trust in the magical power that originated and vibrated not from my heart but from my womb. I felt the sacredness of my femaleness on an even deeper level. She returned to her drum and I danced into a new way of being. This was the magic of Wahru, the magic she offered in some personal way to every single woman that day who was able to be present in that circle. This is what happens when women have time together. This is what happens when we have the life-giving, life-changing opportunity to learn from such a teacher.

The longer I live, the more strongly I feel the importance of remembering, recalling, repeating the stories of the women leaders throughout time who are now our ancestresses. We are intentionally not taught in schools nor in our wider communities about the power and peaceful intentions of so many women. I remember vividly being told in school that women had never done anything worth mentioning. We search for the bits of stories we can glean, and share to keep them known. 

May the stories of all Wahru has done for so many of us remain known. And may we continue to be aware of how important these stories are, and how important our contributions are in creating together the world we know from deep inside is possible.