NABS on the Road: Eric Jordan - Ansted, WV

Documenting 2024 Black Appalachian Storyteller Fellows

A Ten-Post Series by Ilene Evans Editor: Karen Abdul-Malik

Our first stop was to visit Eric and his mother, Brucella, at the African American Heritage Family Tree Museum.  Ansted, WV, was once a bustling coal mining and timber town nestled in the steep hills and rills along the rim of the New River Gorge and along the Midland Trail Scenic Highway. Eric is working on a book that tracks the adventures he shared with his father, Black Arts Poet and playwright, Norman Jordan. Eric, his sister and brother grew up both on the road, the backstage theater and in the holler of Ansted, West Virginia. 

The Africa American Heritage and Family Tree Museum in Ansted, WV.

Norman Jordan (top row left) with father, mother, brothers, and sisters

Brucella, Eric’s mother, now 80 years young, remembered the strong Black community that housed, fed, protected, and nourished people in the time of Jim Crow segregation. She shared the oral history collections she documented as a young bride. In her beginnings of being a young bride and becoming  the family and town historian she documented the culture through oral histories. Eric grew up with a strong sense of place and pride because the documentations of his mother and the stories, plays, poems and travels of his father, Norman Jordan. Eric was included as were his siblings in the plays his father wrote and performed.  The family ties were strong because of these artistic, life-learning experiences, and the Jordan Clan was a full example of faith, unity, creativity, joy, and academic excellence. The whole family shared Norman Jordan’s notoriety as one of the recognized poets of the Black Arts Movement. The museum catalogues Eric’s father’s journey until his passing in 2015.

Brucella and Eric Jordan

Display of Norman Jordan’s Publications

Norman Jordan and Nikki Givanni

(Left) Brucella and Eric Jordan at the African American Family Heritage Museum in Ansted, WV. (Center) Display of Norman’s publications. (Right) Norman Jordan, Eric’s Dad, with poet and friend, Nikki Giovanni, sharing their recognition as poets and activists in their people’s voices.

Eric behind the mic and with his Black Appalachian Storytelling Award 2024

Eric/Monstalung gave us a sense of the journey in music and the style of Hip Hop through dance. His dancing started with locking with the group called Watermelon Patch performing downtown in Tuskegee, AL. Michael Jackson’s robot was big at the time and when he got to be called up from the audience to show what he could do – he “kilt” it. And a career was born with his dad as his manager. He was a locker. Hip Hop embodies so much from our African roots of rhythm, expression, resistance, working the pain and frustrations of life. Then, after moving to West Virginia, when cousins visited from New York they brought freestyling, bang beats, graffiti.  Later, living in Morgantown, WV, Eric started his own break dance crew to get enough money to go to the movies and buy popcorn and candy. It reminds me of the work that “Juba” did in giving folks a way of getting their story out, the wrongs expressed, the hurts danced through. Dancing was a healing thing. Singing was a healing thing. People may not always know the analytics of healing intellectually, but they know it intuitively. Music feels with us as we hurt, and it makes a path for release and healing. Eric was immersed from a very early age of the healing power of art, music, story, poetry, song and dance. Interwoven into presentations of Black Appalachian Storytelling, Eric garners these gifts in his practice to heal himself, his family and to guide more youth toward a path for growth. 

African American Family Heritage Museum in Ansted, WV

The African American Heritage Family Tree Museum has distinguished itself as a reliable resource for West Virginia’s African American history and heritage. Since its inception in 1991, the African American Heritage Family Tree Museum has conducted numerous research projects, displayed a considerable number of in house and traveling exhibits, recorded oral interviews, visited local schools...

The Norman Jordan African American Arts & Heritage Academy 

New Song Studio Session: https://youtu.be/M92kSpNDnQE

Leadership Potential and Let God Do the Rest: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1AWvFotNyq/