Excerpt from "Suspended" by Joy Harjo
We were driving somewhere in Tulsa, the northern border of the Creek Nation. I don't know where we were
going or where we had been, but I know the sun was boiling the asphalt, the car windows open for any breeze
as I stood on tiptoes on the floorboard behind my father, a handsome god who smelled of Old Spice, whose
slick black hair was always impeccably groomed, his clothes perfectly creased and ironed. The radio was on. I
loved the radio, jukeboxes or any magic thing containing music even then.
I wonder now what signaled this moment, a loop of time that on first glance could be any place in time. I
became acutely aware of the line the jazz trumpeter was playing (a sound I later associated with Miles Davis). I
didn't know the word jazz or trumpet, or the concepts. I don't know how to say it, with what sounds or words,
but in that confluence of hot southern afternoon, in the breeze of aftershave and humidity, I followed that
sound to the beginning, to the place of the birth of sound. I was suspended in whirling stars, a moon to which I'd
traveled often by then. I grieved my parents' failings, my own life which I saw stretched the length of that
rhapsody.
My rite of passage into the world of humanity occurred then, via jazz. The music made a startling bridge
between familiar and strange lands, an appropriate vehicle, for though the music is predominantly west African
in concept, with European associations, jazz was influenced by the Creek (or Muscogee) people, for we were
there when jazz was born. I recognized it, that humid afternoon in my formative years, as a way to speak
beyond the confines of ordinary language. I still hear it.
Which of the following generalizations can be made based on
the selection?
OA Traveling with family can be a stressful experience.
OB Important rites of passage always happen on road
trips.
OC All children idolize their parents when they are at a
young age.
OD Music can communicate with people across diverse
culture and languages.
