LOOKA YONDER 
The same innocent boy who was jailed for stealing a chicken, could be seen around Ninety-Six, South Carolina, sitting on a wooden stoop playing his jew’s harp, his dog, Jack, pressed against him. Odean Pope remembers some halcyon days from a younger time when he was growing up around Ninety-Six. His nine paternal aunts gave him money every Saturday. The eldest, Aunt Ruth said, “If they gonna give you 25 cents then I’m gonna give you 50 cents!” $2.50 was a lot of money for a boy in Ninety-Six at that time. Odean went to town every Saturday where he splurged on ice cream. Going to the Greenville Fair every year felt very special. He spent summers with his maternal aunt who sharecropped and remembers being allowed to lead the mule driven wagon. He loved his two teachers in school and stayed in touch with Miss Ethel for over a decade after moving to Philadelphia. Odean loved Sundays in church listening to his mother’s choir and being allowed to ‘speak,’ as in preach. Odean can still taste the fried chicken, potato salad, collard greens and lemon cake at the communal picnics after church where the ladies would try to outdo each other with their tasty offerings. Community is the current that runs through Odean’s happy memories. Strong, caring women were the dominant force in his familial community. 
It is a marred nostalgia, however. The specter of fear hung heavy like storm clouds about to let loose with inundation. It was the knowledge that you could be cruelly separated from your family for a crime never committed. It was the knowledge that a man could be dragged by truck through town to his death for the audacity of looking at a white woman. It was hearing the hushed whispers about this or that man hung up on a tree. It was the constant apprehension of being threatened with death by the KKK. One night around eight or nine o’clock, driving home from his aunt’s farm, four white men stopped their car. His mother, Jennie, jumped out, car jack in her hand, and fierce as she was, faced down their guns saying, “Come on, I’ll KILL you!!” They backed off when she told them that she and Odean worked for Mr. Hannick at his cannery. That’s when they figured that Mr. Hannick must have been the grand dragon. As long as Odean stood on the cannery line dropping a lump of salt into each can of beans, he was sort of safe. Maya Angelou said it best, “Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.” 
The alternative that Odean’s parents took was emigration to Philadelphia when Odean was ten years old. Odean moved in with his nine year older half brother, John, from their mother’s first marriage. Odean’s biological maternal grandfather was white. Although he shunned his black offspring, he was the genetic cause of Jennie and Odean having lighter skin, probably why John resented Odean. However, he welcomed Odean into his home where Odean became official babysitter to John’s two sons. Odean made the train trip several months before his parents. It was a hard, long and lonely trip, sweetened only by the basket of fried chicken and cake that Jennie provided. Odean, encumbered with his southern slang, would say, “Looka Yonder!” He was mercilessly teased by his new friends around Colorado Street in North Philadelphia. “I got that together fast!,” says Odean. “Looka yonder” became the rallying point around which Odean transitioned quickly to his new life. 
“Man’s unique opportunity is the way in which he bears his burden.” (V. Frankel) Odean took the opportunity of music to see him through life, his mother’s choir at the core. I suppose that the combination of sonorous sound connected in his mind to God, his mother, extended to the protective community that nurtured him, all became seminal in his motivational system of creativity. The oppressive darkness that stole Odean’s sense of security and threatened his feelings of entitlement also cast their imprint, not only on his psyche but to the sweet and sour marinade that bathed his creative process. Community and Music are two threads running through Odean’s life. The Looka yonder young boy transitioned to the complex musician of today, nurtured along the way by community, notably by the group of musician friends that greatly influenced his musical development.