Let us keep the dance of rain our fathers kept and tread our

The words of Arna Bontemps — “Let us keep the dance of rain our fathers kept and tread our dreams beneath the jungle sky.” — echo like a song carried through the ages, a hymn to memory, heritage, and the unbroken spirit of a people. In these lines, Bontemps calls upon us to remember what is sacred — to hold fast to the rituals, the dreams, and the ancestral rhythms that connect us to our origins. He speaks not only of literal rain or jungle, but of the living pulse of tradition, of the deep bond between humankind and the earth, between the dreamer and his roots. His voice rises from the heart of the Harlem Renaissance, yet it reaches beyond history into the soul of humanity itself.

To keep the dance of rain is to preserve the sacred patterns of life handed down from those who came before us. In ancient times, the dance was more than celebration — it was prayer, gratitude, and communion with the divine forces that sustained the world. The rain dance was a symbol of renewal, a ritual of hope binding human hands to heaven’s waters. Bontemps evokes this image to remind us that even in the modern world — with its noise, its machinery, its forgetting — we must not lose that connection. The dance is life itself: the rhythm of resilience, the choreography of survival. It is through remembrance that we remain whole.

When Bontemps speaks of treading our dreams beneath the jungle sky, he invites us to walk barefoot upon the ground of our ancestors, to dream not apart from nature but within it. The jungle sky represents the vastness of creation — wild, untamed, ancient. Beneath its canopy, the human spirit rediscovers its humility and strength. To tread our dreams there means to bring imagination back to the soil, to let our hopes grow from the same earth that nourished those who came before. In his poetic wisdom, Bontemps warns that when we abandon our roots, our dreams lose their meaning. A tree without earth may rise for a moment, but it will not endure.

The origin of this quote lies in the cultural and spiritual reawakening of Black art and identity during the early 20th century. Arna Bontemps, alongside Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and others, sought to reclaim the dignity of African heritage in a world scarred by oppression. Through poetry, song, and story, they reconnected the children of the diaspora with the spirit of their ancestors — the rhythm of drums, the stories of creation, the dance of rain that symbolized endurance through suffering and rebirth through hope. Bontemps’s line, then, is not nostalgia — it is prophecy: a call to balance progress with remembrance, intellect with spirit.

Throughout history, those who forgot their dance lost not only their culture but their soul. Consider the story of the Native American Ghost Dance of the late 1800s — a spiritual movement born from despair and faith. The people, stripped of land and freedom, turned to the dance as a bridge between worlds. It was their prayer that the old harmony would return, that the earth would heal. Though it was met with tragedy, the dance itself survived — passed on in whispers and ceremony — a testament that heritage cannot be erased when it lives in the body and the spirit. In this same light, Bontemps’s plea becomes universal: to every nation, every generation, every heart that forgets its beginning, he says — remember the rain that birthed you, remember the rhythm that sustains you.

In the symbolic language of the ancients, rain is not merely water but blessing — the descent of grace from heaven to earth. To dance in it is to receive life with gratitude and courage. Our fathers, Bontemps tells us, knew this. They faced storms but found joy in the rhythm of the rain. Today, the storm may take other forms — wars, loss, injustice, despair — yet the dance remains the answer. To keep the dance is to live not in fear but in faith, to move through darkness with the heart’s music intact.

So, O listener, carry this teaching like a sacred drumbeat in your soul: keep the dance of rain. Do not let the world’s noise drown the songs of your ancestors. Tread your dreams not upon cold pavement alone, but upon the living earth of your own history. Let your steps be prayers, your dreams be offerings. For those who forget their dance lose their direction; but those who remember, even in exile, will always find their way home beneath the jungle sky — that eternal dome of life, mystery, and renewal.

Thus, through Arna Bontemps, the voice of the past becomes the heartbeat of the future. His words are both elegy and commandment: to dream boldly, yet never forget where the dream was born.