Requiem for a Sunbeam

Abstract

In the late 1980s Jamel Washington was a Black gay executive at one of the top publishing houses in the world. In addition to having attained the “good life,” Jamel was especially proud of his “negative” HIV status, until the death of his best friend since childhood, Rufus Anderson, who was an internationally known musician. Jamel and Rufus were members of the Sunbeams, a youth ensemble of poets, dancers, and musicians based in their small rural community of Antelope, Missouri. Antelope was founded by enslaved African fugitives who fled Mississippi after the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The fugitives retained forms of magic and metaphysics, and, following the instructions delivered to them in a covenant song from the river, they cultivated a sacred medicine of each-otherness. In the process of handling the details for Rufus’ funeral, Jamel re-discovers the sacred medicine of Antelope as a source of self-love that not only dissolves his selfish pride, but sets him free to heal others.

“Requiem for a Sunbeam” is an allegorical fiction that calls Black queer people back to the roots of cultural strength—community, art, ritual, elder wisdom, the inherent worth of self—in order to survive and fight homophobia and HIV/AIDS. “Requiem for A Sunbeam” is not only a work of magical historical realism, but it is also a work of Black musical syncretism and Afro-Atlantic spirituality. In the words of Antelope’s covenant song: We are each other’s medicine.

Keywords:

• music
• magic
• medicine
• crossing
• water
• sow seeds

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Johari Jabir

Johari Jabir is a musician and scholar. A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Johari began piano lessons at an early age and was immersed in the expressive culture of St. Louis’ Black working class religious community, which is the foundation for his continued practice as a musician, cultural historian, and contemplative teacher. He is currently professor of Black Studies at University of Illinois, Chicago, and director of music for St. George & St. Matthias Episcopal Church in Chicago. His first book, Conjuring Freedom: Music and Masculinity in the Gospel Army of the Civil War (Ohio State University Press, 2017), is a cultural history of the nation’s first Black regiment, the 1^st South Carolina Volunteers.