A black man in London driving a blue Rolls-Royce is sideswiped by a van pulling out of a parking lot. It’s not serious as far as accidents go, no one is injured, but the white woman driving the van is irate. Her rage propels her out of her car to confront the man. As she is cursing him, the police appear. It doesn’t take them long to recognize the man driving the Rolls. An officer turns to the woman and tells her to calm down. “Do you know who this is?” he asks. “Teardrops.” It’s the mid-1990s.
Teardrops. At the officer’s mention of the song title, the angry white woman crumples to the ground. Crying, she runs toward the black man and sinks to her knees. She kisses his hand, begging his forgiveness.
In the Rolls-Royce three little girls are in the backseat, watching.
Today the girls –Zekuumba (BG), Zeimani, and Kucha (KC) Zekkariyas—are known professionally as The Womack Sisters.
“In that moment I saw the power of music,” Zeimani says of the accident scene in London.
Composed by Linda & Cecil Womack,“Teardrops” was an international success, selling more than 10 million copies worldwide and charting at number 3 in the UK. At the time of the accident in London, Womack & Womack were American musical royalty, and had written songs for Teddy Pendergrass, Patti LaBelle, Chaka Khan, and the O’Jays. They were at the height of their powers in America, but success and fame were not enough. They wanted to explore fresh territory, create a new beginning, but first they had to contend with the past.
A few years before the London incident, Cecil had a life-changing encounter with a white man in West Virginia, where the Womack family had built a home on 200 acres of land. The white man referred to himself as an “original Womack,” implying that Cecil’s ancestors must have belonged to his ancestors. “When our father heard that, I think he took it upon himself to reinstate our true worth and give something back to the family.”
The white man’s arrogance angered Cecil, but it also inspired him. He started to do research on the family. Eventually, he was able to trace the family lineage back to the Benin ethnic group in Nigeria. His investigation led him to a name: Zekkariyas, which means ‘gather my people.’ “It was less a name change than an undoing, or a returning to the pride that they had prior to the slave trade,” BG explains. In the years to come, Cecil and Linda would perform with their children as The House of Zekkariyas.
By the early 1990s, Cecil and Linda had grown restless with the conventions of American life and become eager to distance themselves from stifling institutions and traditions. Their private quest quickly became public. They were pressured to make the rounds of talk shows and tell the story of their name change as a classic back-to-Africa journey. “My parents weren’t really looking to revive a movement, but be the change,” BG says. Friends in politics confirmed their suspicions that they were under government surveillance. “Any time someone is inspiring change or awareness, there is going to be a threat.” Especially if that someone is black, at least in America. Once Linda and Cecil left the United States, they were free from the danger posed by other people’s fears and desires.
Freedom and authenticity. These twin ambitions served as guides for the parents as they made their way around the world and established in various countries, such as Ireland, Thailand, South Africa, London, and the Bahamas. At a young age, the children understood that their parents were determined to exercise the liberty that they had been denied when they were young. “They wanted us to be just as vigilant in figuring out life for ourselves,” Zeimani explains.
That determination affected the children’s education. “In Australia, we had a homeschooling thing set up,” BG recalls. “Our father would tutor us. When we were on the road, we would tutor each other.” Their parents’ approach to schooling was thorough and pragmatic. KC says of her mother: “She wanted us to focus on the things that would allow us to evolve, as opposed to the standards of what is expected.”
Linda had attended college while Cecil left high school before graduating. “He was self-educated to the point where it was crazy,” BG says. Cecil Womack delivered all 7 of the children that he had with Linda, even massaging a breech birth into position. He had observed the way his wife had been treated by white health care workers when she was in an American hospital, “like she was made of stone,” BG recalls. He enlisted a midwife for the first baby, but for the rest of the children, it was just Cecil and Linda.
