If you’ve ever been locked in a closet, crawlspace or windowless bathroom, you know what darkness is.
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It’s engulfing. It doesn’t talk much. It’s humorless and unamusing. It’s probably not very attractive, either, though your straining eyes can’t distinguish its features enough to really tell.
And when you’re caught too long in its company, it’ll pale your skin, sour your spirits and send you off to slumber under a woolly covering of lethargy before you can formulate a reason to excuse yourself. Darkness can be a downer like that.
Winter can have the same effect. But, thank greenness, spring eventually shows up swinging a maple tree like a battering ram, blowing the doors wide and sending darkness skedaddling.
Spring can be a hero like that. And we’re happy to put on the celebratory parade.
This Sunday’s Ebune: Procession of the Ram parade in Portland honors spring’s much-appreciated return. The annual event floods Congress Street with mask-wearing paradegoers, musical instruments, colorful banners and papier-mache puppets.
There will be drumming, music and dance, all aimed at celebrating the season and bringing the community together, according to Oscar Mokeme, director of the Museum of African Culture.
“(Spring) brings us out of the depths of darkness,” he said. “Out of the cold hibernation, to look at the possibilities ahead.”
Participants will take to the street at noon, starting from Maine College of Art, 522 Congress St., and ending at the Eastern Prom.
The symbolic ram — known as a harbinger of spring renewal and fertility — will be present in the form of papier-mache masks and puppets held overhead in seasonal triumph.
“It takes a community to energize this sort of parade,” Mokeme said. It’s their collective energy, mind and spirit that makes the event what it is. This year’s theme, “Climbing to the Mountaintop,” aims to inspire even more.
“It’s the idea to inspire people to strive to overcome obstacles,” said Mokeme. “To be the best they can be at their highest peak.”
There’s likely to be some mountain imagery mixed in with the banners and handcrafted parade accoutrements on Sunday. There’s also the handy East End hill to climb — an apropos path, since it might feel like a mountain, depending on how heavy your puppet is.
In nothing else, dancing from MECA to the Eastern Prom is great exercise, said Mokeme, who noted his own costume weighs 75 pounds.
And unlike all those persnickety “Shriners and marching bands only” parades you’ve witnessed in the past while relegated to the curbside, everyone is welcome to participate in Ebune.
So dust off that old ram’s head you kept tucked away in a box in the garage because it tended to scare your girlfriends. If that treasured heirloom has already gone the resale way, you can craft your own during free mask-making workshops at MECA from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Even better, there will be extra banners, puppets and other parade paraphernalia on hand Sunday for last-minute Ebune participants to borrow. Simply pick one up in front of MECA, carry it along Congress Street, and drop it off at the Eastern Prom so it can be reused next year.
At the Prom, paradegoers can hang around or recline on the soon-to-be-green grass, where drummers, dancers, firewalkers and jugglers will congregate for the afternoon. Mokeme, in costume and mask handed down through his family, will offer blessings with a lamb’s mane wand.
“We want more people to come and celebrate,” said Mokeme. “For people who haven’t participated, it’s time to climb the mountaintop. Move beyond just imagining.
“It’s about waking ourselves up to the world. When we dance, we invoke life and embrace it.”
It’s also a stellar way to tell darkness to back off, you’ve got mountains to climb this summer.
Staff Writer Shannon Bryan can be contacted at 791-6333 or at:
sbryan@mainetoday.com
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