Whenever Caribbean artists have written they have, in some way or other, written the Black Diaspora. It is an inescapable part of their historical/cultural mindscape. Africa, The Americas, Europe are bound together by bands initiated by Columbus with his three ships and extended and held firm by various historical formulations (the British Empire for example). The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade is the backdrop against which Caribbean and indeed all other writers of the Black Diaspora, create. That the people of whom the Diaspora is composed share African ancestry of one nation or another is part of the historical binding. There has always been a triangle. The ship has been Europe, the cargo Africa, the location ad quern the Americas. What is more interesting than the mere acknowledgement of this history however, is the examination of the different ways in which writers invoke considerations of Diaspora with its undeniable linkages. It is possible to trace a triangle that is different from the one usually acknowledged, perhaps a smaller one in which the ship is less tangible and the sea less palpable. I am proposing a triangle of sound and I begin with Kamau Brathwaite' s much quoted lines in which wind instruments create a bridge between Africa and the two Americas. It begins with the sound of the mmenson, the elephant tusk orchestras of East Africa coming out from Nairobi, Kenya to become trumpet and saxophone as it goes through the Caribbean and into the USA2: Toot Toot takes it up in Havana in Harlem bridges of sound uncurl through the pale rigging of saxophone stops. . . Jah, Islands 1969:3 I want to comment on two novels in terms of the use of sound to make diaspora connections. They are: Paule Marshall's Praise Song for the Widow and Erna Brodber's Louisiana. Praise song for the widow Marshall tells the story of an Afro- American widow on a Caribbean cruise. The stop- over on one of the islands becomes significant enough for the woman to abandon her friends, interrupt the cruise and take her life in an entirely unexpected direction. Her first discovery is that the man- in- the- street does not identify the difference between her and the black women on the island. The Africa in both is stronger than the cultural differences indicated by clothes and luggage. Eventually she meets, and is seduced by the narrative of, an old man closing his lean-to shop where she had hoped to buy a drink. The old man walks with a limp. He might be Legba the Yoruba god frequently represented with this walk. Legba is god of the gateway, god of the crossroads. This man might indeed be Legba in one of his incarnations. He inveigles her to go with him to witness, perhaps take part in, a significant ritual. She yields and crosses the turbulent sea to the celebration of the ancestral presence, the Big Drum celebration in Carriacou, a small Caribbean island where people remember and pander to the ancestors (the Old Parents) asking pardon for whatever wrongs they might have done lest they visit evil upon them. The invitation, there in the shop, includes the old man's passionate and dramatic rendition of the Beg Pardon in the French Creole of the island. The text reads: ...suddenly he began singing in a quavering, high-pitched voice, his eyes transfixed, 'Pa 'done mwe /Si mwe merite/ Pini mwe ' (1989: 165) The woman could not have foreseen what this meeting would mean, what turn she would take at this cross-roads, what gateway would be opened for her. The effect was immediate. She had felt this way before: She felt the dizziness coming on again. The man's garrulousness, the bizarre turn his talk had taken (what was this voodoo about lighted candles, old parents, big drums and the rest?) and now his shrill, unintelligible song... (page 166) These are the words on the page but the reader familiar with Caribbean literature will read that an important change, a new beginning is near, might even hear words quoted by Brathwaite (Wake and Negus In Islands pages 54 and 67)) who explains in a note that the words are an invocation to Legba and mark an important moment in vodoun worship ( page ix) Attibon Legba Attibon Legba Ouvri bayi pou' moi (Open the door for me) Much much later after many physical and psychological travails this woman from the USA is able to join in the singing and dancing, the sounds and movements of Africa as the different ancestral nations are recognized. …