Missa Luba, By Brenda Quant 

It's 1962. My brother is in school in New  York. From the "Mighty 9" —the New  Orleans 9th ward— to the Big Apple. Incredible. He expands my narrow, sixteen-year-old horizon by sending me treasured scraps of his new one —a  program book from the Apollo Theater, a  Mets hat, letters composed on a typewriter.  But the best gift was a record album entitled Missa Luba, the Mass sung in  Latin by Africans.  

At that time, the Mass was celebrated in  Latin throughout the world. I suppose I imagined it sounded the same everywhere —organ dirge accompanying classical and operatic Latin, echoing off the vaulted ceilings of cathedrals, or sprawled flat on the floor of small churches like ours. The very word catholic meant universal, the nuns told us. And no matter the quality of voices or organ, Gregorian chant was soothing in its sameness and monotony.  

I had never wondered about Catholicism in Africa. Back then, I don't believe I  thought Catholicism even existed in Africa. Our religious instructors generally used the word pagan in any sentence that contained the word Africa. Sometimes the word missionary was thrown in as well. But still, I'm sure I never thought about the outcome of missionary work upon "pagan" Africans as resulting in  Catholicism, with all of its trappings and rituals. And of course I had no understanding of the history and roots of it all —the colonial and post-colonial stranglehold on Africa that for centuries had been anglicized, catholicized, protestantized, baptized and pillaged.  

I had the tunnel vision of integration in 1962. Integration of the South, of New  Orleans, of Canal Street. Africa was as familiar as Mars to my friends and me. The only African roots we acknowledged were those that grew out of our heads. Nappy roots. Naps. That embarrassing condition that was at its worst on the Friday before the Saturday you went to get your hair fixed, or any day that was rainy or humid, or anytime you sweat. New Orleans has an abundance of rain, humidity, and sweat. Naps were a continual challenge.  

It was usually in connection with hair that the phrases "the old country" and "the mother country" —phrases borrowed from European immigrants we knew only from television— were used among my friends. If someone looked you in the face, and then raised her gaze to your hair and said something about the mother country, you knew this was a friendly, though crass reminder that it was time for the hot comb, or maybe a hat. It couldn't have meant any more than that because you both knew you had no mother country. But that changed.  

Missa Luba gave birth to my mother country.  

Here was the familiar Latin, the Mass as known all over the planet. But different.  So different. It was African. Clean, clear children's voices, like chimes, melodies with counter melodies floating and dancing above them, the passion of belief in every measure. The chorus throws out a challenge, the solo voice meets it and issues its own challenge. The voices play with phrases, calling and questioning,  answering and affirming. They work out their differences and end each song in rich, soul-satisfying harmony. And all of it supported by restless, insistent drums.  

It was the drums that did it. I couldn't hear those drums and keep still, no matter how holy the Latin words were. I danced down. I danced like the only Africans I'd ever seen —black extras in Tarzan and King Kong movies. I let those drums ripple up my spine and bounce my head up and down while I sang along —Kyrie Eleison,  Christi Eleison. This was my first taste of African music, and I knew the words.  

I knew the sound, too. In the tension between the chords of the chorus and the  assertive tenorish soloist, I recognized the origins of the sound I knew as "rock and  roll" music, the sound that would soon be called "soul" music, and the two-step three-step-jazz-blues my parents simply called "music."  

It was also an undeniably Gospel sound.  

I wanted to share this experience with my schoolmates. I was certain that if I  brought the album to school, our music teacher would see the wisdom of playing it for the class.  

Sister Marie Juliette was our buried treasure. With her for an hour every day, there was respite from algebra, Latin, chemistry and other tortures. She had been cloistered for some years in a mythical place called Julliard where the secrets of music were kept. Now, she devoted her days to sharing potent doses of these secrets with us barely-worthy Rock n’ Roll fans. 

Sister Marie Juliette took possession of the Missa Luba album and kept it for a suspiciously long time before she finally hinted that she would play it for us one day soon.  

On the appointed day, she introduced the album, encouraging our appreciation of the diversity of cultures it represented. The silence of anticipation and curiosity was heavy in the room as Sister let the needle arm slip gently from her plump brown fingers to the spinning record.  

The music starts.  

Drums and other unknown percussion instruments begin the tension. The voices of Congolese children join in singing Kyrie Eleison, familiar Catholic Greek. The tension builds.  

Christi Eleison. The drums are relentless. The voices call. In seconds, the room full  of Catholic girls are wanton Watusis. Their bodies become percussion instruments.  Heads bob, shoulders bounce, hips gyrate, hands clap, fingers pop, 40 pairs of  saddle oxfords stomp the floor—all this from a sitting position. They know the  words. They begin to sing along. Nothing can stop the motion. Nothing except  Sister's hand yanking needle arm from record.  

The drums die abruptly and the girls settle back in their chairs. Sister Marie Juliette is disappointed in us. She delivers a short lecture on the sanctity of the music. Then she starts the record again. This time the girls hold out a little longer before they let the dancing Watusi spirits have their bodies. But the Watusis win before the Kyrie is over. We are Africans in blue and white uniforms, unable to hear our drums without responding.  

Sister stops the record again. "This is the Mass," she screams. I think she called us animals.  

Only my closest friends heard the entire album when they came to my house on weekends.  

The next year, my cousin Joan came to live with us. She joined Ursula, Sylvia,  Bernadette, Patricia, Lorraine, Barbara and me singing and dancing along with the  Catholic Africans. But after a while, Joan began to worry that it might be a sin to dance to the Mass. The rest of us weren't sure, but it felt so good we couldn't stop. There was movement in our hips that even Ernie K-Doe and the Royal Dukes of  Rhythm had not evoked, more sensual and satisfying than anything Elvis had stolen. And we weren't giving it up. We danced and sang and shook. Angus Dei ...  Misereri Nobis.  

I visualized myself in hell. "What are you in for?" a murderer asks me. "I did the Watusi to the Kyrie Eleison," I confess. A rapist overhears and gasps at my lack of shame.  

Joan worked herself up into minor agony over the guilty pleasure of dancing to the  Missa Luba. If religion felt this good, it must be sinful. She confessed dancing to the Mass to a progressive young priest. He advised her that Abraham had danced, Isaac had danced, Rebecca and David and a host of Old Testament names had all danced in praise of God. She came home and announced that she was in a state of grace and celebrated by dancing without shame to the Missa Luba.  

I was grateful to Joan. She sought the counsel that removed the guilt from this pleasure that felt so sinful, but that was, in the eyes of this one priest at least, a  religious tradition older than Jesus. Ursula and I joined Joan in the dance that day,  but I think we all understood that we were not praising God, we were praising  Africa and finding her in ourselves.  

It seemed odd that I should have found Africa in this roundabout, planetary way, and that I first became linked to my motherland by a common religion that is not considered ours. Catholicism was imposed on Africa by missionaries and imperialists; I belonged to one of the black Catholic parishes served by priests who called themselves "Missionaries in Service to Colored America," a title which persisted despite the fact that most of the families they ministered to had been  Catholic for generations. The words African and Catholic seemed as uneasy in each other's company as those other two words that described us — Negro  American. What could be more mixed up than Catholic colored girls dancing to  African voices and African drums celebrating the Roman Catholic ritual of sacrifice in a language, foreign, classical, and long-dead?  

Recently, my brother, who's full of obscure, stunning trivia, asked me this: "What type of music would you consider to be the most removed from African musical  tradition?"  

It didn't take me long to come up with my answer. "Gregorian Chant," I said.  

"That's what I thought you'd say," he said smiling. "Gregorian Chant," he was pleased to inform me, "originated in Africa centuries ago."