Sound in Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust”
I had vaguely heard of Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust” when “Lemonade” first came out in 2016. Beyoncé’s musical production had drawn influence from the iconic film from decades past, thus beginning my understanding of the relationship between music and song, with the film itself. However, the way Julie Dash was able to create a connection between sound, time, family, and place in the film was something I had not come into contact with before.
Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust” is a film centered around the Peazant family as a portion of the family prepares to travel North to set roots in the mainland. The family, led by Nana Peazant, have a life isolated from white American society, able to keep hold of the African traditions, beliefs, and spirituality that Nana was able to retain from her ancestors. Set in 1902, the film is a vignette of a family taking part in the Great Migration, a time in which Black people were moving to the North in hopes of taking part in the meritocratic ideals of the “American Dream” that were violently inaccessible to them in the South. To the members of the Peazant family who seek to travel North, the mainland symbolizes a Canan-esque wonderland; a land in which, while they might face racism and the dangers that entails, is rich with resources and opportunities not present on the island. As a result of this desire to essentially escape the small island in the south, they spend the movie seeking to distance themselves from the traditional African spirituality and beliefs, which Nana Peazant personifies. However, they are connected through family ties, spiritual bonds, as well as their connection to the island itself, and the past and present are in constant contact with each other. In Daughters of the Dust, Julie Dash builds a bridge connecting the people and spaces that symbolize past, present, and future through sounds and music, transcending the ideas of time as a linear structure and creating a cyclical temporal view of the timeline of the Peazant family as they split to begin a new life.
The past is exemplified through Nana Peazant, a survivor of american chattel slavery who began a life for herself her family on the islands off the coast of the Carolinas. She is deeply connected to African spirituality and the concept of ancestral connections and traditions, a belief system seen by some of the younger generations as inane, hedonistic, and outdated. She acts as her family’s Griot, holding the family’s stories, history, language and traditions in her mind and the tin can she carries with her, filled with “totems, charms, trinkets and a swatch of hair from her mother. (Machiorlatti 101). Her priority as her family prepares to leave for the mainland is that they do not lose sight of the connection to their past- their African roots, their ancestors, and Nana herself. Her connection to her own African roots is exemplified through her way of speaking (often a combination Gullah, African American vernacular English, and American standard English), as well as the backing track that plays while she takes the forefront of a scene. John Barnes, the composer for Daughters of the Dust, intentionally filled Nana’s theme with sounds of “the synclavier, the Middle Eastern santour, African bata drums and African talking drums” in hopes of creating an “Afri-centric perspective” through Nana’s character, and the sounds that surround her as she speaks (Machiorlatti 111).
The presence of the drums in particular are noticeable when watching the film. Nana symbolizes the past itself- while she is still alive, she is also the storykeeper of all who come before her, in the same way that the African drums were used for ceremony and all forms of communication, from wartime to the ability to tell a story to other tribe members. These talking drums were banned when the enslaved arrived in America after being forced from their homes and brought into a land that actively despised and suppressed their culture, and sought to rip family units apart. Nana’s theme utilizing these drums acts as a reminder to the reader of her role as the family’s Griot, the trauma she has been forced to carry with her, and the innate desire she feels to keep the family together that she worked so hard to create, protect, and care for.
When Nana interacts with her Eli, there is an introduction of an underlying synth track. At one point, when Nana and Eli begin to argue about Eula’s child and rape, the music alternates from drumming to synth. As Eli begins to yell at Nana about his disillusionment with Nana’s “tree of glass jars and bottles,” and other forms of traditional beliefs and practices that Nana does, the synth takes over (Daughters 21:14). This is the present attempting to overcome the past. The resentment Eli feels towards Nana for not doing what he sees as her job as matriarch of the clan, manifests itself in music. However, Nana responds and reminds Eli of the importance of family- that no child born to him was one that was not given to him, and that connection to the ancestors is what has gotten them this far. In this scene, we cut to the young women in the family dancing in circles, as Nana’s voice continues overhead. Nana’s voice acts as a bridge between past and present, and in that same way, the drums and synth music combine as a backing track that reappears throughout the film as old and new reconcile and come together.
The use of synth music in this film adds a new temporal dimension to the music, thus the film itself. While Daughters of the Dust takes place in 1902, the film was released in 1991. As such, this music was incredibly timely, and connects the modern audience with the Peazants of the past. This connects old and new, and new to newer. The music, also prevalent in hip-hop and R&B music in that time, also builds a bridge between the ways in which the different characters, and the viewer, understand Blackness. While Black people are not a monolith, not even Black American people, this is still a reminder that we are all connected through ancestry. The talking drums of the African tribes from which we came translated into gospel and blues music of the 19th and 20th centuries, which turned to the synth music of R&B and hip-hop, all the way to the 808 beats and trap music popularized through modern rap of the 21st century. Drums are an essential part of Black music and Black culture at large. By utilizing them in this way, Dash is able to create another connection to another group of Black people, those who have only known the “mainland” and have sought to create a culture and set of roots within a white world.
While the drums are quintessential to Nana’s theme, there is an absence of drums in the Unborn Child’s theme. Her music, characterized by flutes and chimes, is described by Barnes as “in the Key of B, the key of Libra, representing balance and justice” (Machiorlatti 111). The Unborn Child of Eula and Eli is a symbol of the act of overcoming racial oppression, as well as a sign of the growth of a new generation, one that is now the first to be born a generation removed from chattel slavery. Her music is soft, child-like, and not intense to the ears. When first introduced, there is drumming in the background. This symbolizes her connection to Nana, the past, and the ancestors from which she came. However, as she begins to venture on her own (looking at pictures on the beach, running through the island’s woods), the drums fade away and we are left with the flute and chimes. This signifies the purity and independence of the child, and the major key gives the theme an air of innocence and optimism, in a time where her parents are not sure if she is a product of Eula’s rape, a major point of contention within Eli especially.
However, outside of music there is a strong connection between past and present within the sounds of the island itself. As Nana looks back towards her memories of founding the island with her husband, there is a rush of wind through her hair and clothes, and the scene cuts to younger Nana and her husband discussing the planting they must do to sustain their life on the island. The island holds the history of their people; that wind went through Nana went through her children, and her children’s children, as they built a life, free from the shackles of slavery. The presence of nature’s sounds are there throughout the film, from the waves crashing as Eula describes the beauty of the Island to Yellow Mary and Trula, to the frogs croaking as they sit on the beach. It is a reminder of the pastoral idyllism the residents of the island are able to inhibit. It is yet another reminder of the beauty of the island, and the connection they have to safety from a society that is assumedly noisily industrializing, and vehemently anti-Black. Dash is able to show the ways in which ancestry, spirituality and place transcend time. The waves that we hear in the background are from the same water that the Ibo tribespeople leapt into to escape their chains; the same water that the Peazants take to begin their journey on the mainland. The wind that rushed through Nana’s hair is the same wind that helps guide their ship, and blows through the family that remains on the island.
Dash and Barnes work together to create a film that morphs the way a Western viewer sees time. While we often observe time as a line, where the past is on one end, we are pointed in the present, and the future exists ahead, Daughters of the Dust uses spirituality to depict a cyclical model common in other cultures. The film is able to sonically connect all time so that generations of Peazants exist all at once, even as they prepare to say goodbye to one another. Nana’s role as the matriarch and Griot of the family gives her the space to bolster this cycle. As Jennifer Machiorlatti states, “the hoop of her family, her people, will remain unbroken as she summons the consciousness of timelessness” (Machiorlatti 112–113).Through the sounds of the island and the music of the film, Dash is able to create a narrative that connects Black people, from the Ibo tribe of the past all the way to modern viewers 30 years after her film’s release.
When I listen to rap music of today, or take my modern dance classes to the background of traditional West African drums, there is a connnection to the greater diaspora. Dash is able to create that same connection throughout the film.
