Last few week(end)s I been talking en hanging with mo’ bredrin en dadas that I love, respekt en admire so….reasoning bout many tings close to our hearts: love/r/s, families, dreams, passions, work, our Afrikan stories, healing en the transitions that we’ve stumbled, are walking en continue grounding thru…so grateful for the manifestations of our quests to spread (salaam) love en unity within our communities, I give thanks for what brought and binds us together forever….
coz last couple o’ nites were like heaven on earth…. where infinite possibilities (re)presented themselves with beautiful, loving folks coming together to cook en break bread [pan-afrikan style], fundraise, play, reason en share many resources….real tox: these are the hadithi of the q_t werd, the blessings en powah of positive(ly) productive collectives, everyday…
like yesterday, I heard bout the story of na nga def en of revolushunary collectives in the diaspora embracing back to Afrika movements, yet another [trailer of a] doc that changed my life forever, four women (en then some) struck deep, their werds walking with me since
When we organise we find strength then in (you know) supporting each other, in being able to project our voices collectively [talent jumo]…
you’d have to get people to unite, take my country for instance… I wouldn’t advise that people must now start fighting, but it took war for us in order to get freedom, and people of colour in Brazil need to unite and stand for one thing [sega khutlapyo]…
it’s about creating positive energy and positive vibes around us [angel wainaina]….
i personally would want to help in that fight [yaganoma baatoulkuu]…..
Pamoja tulifika on Saturday….. en Sunday night was a reminder of how far we’ve come, how far we have to go still in building solidarity amongst our communities, en how much we have to be grateful for with the loving, growing revolushunary villages being rebuilt in the heart of urban centres in de’ diaspora en on the continent en….I pray that we continue to change the destructive paths we’ve been on, en fulfill our destinies
Truthis…our love (and growth stories) is at the crux of coming together…..sharing fantasies en food, fundraising, storytelling, celebrating, playing en praying together…..filling our hearts with the divine energy of the kinda people that we want to rebuild our homes with…
Real tox is… these quests we’re documenting, are (not only) our own and of people we know,
in dis space, now….we’re still getting to the crux of where we wanna be, in another place not here…
and there’s always the matter of how much villages should know about who exactly is coming, when the child hasn’t even arrived or chosen to stay in dis world yet…..
The riddle of the sphinx (in the q_t werd) is in the connecshun between nneka en nneke dumela. Where did nneka en nneke meet? In what different world(s)?
Real tox is….. there’s only so many stories we can share ‘about’ the q_t werd before we’ve finished production, only so much we can tell you about nneke before the biomythical monologue for the play is even finished, or bout nneka before we’ve even shot the interview, so we’ll tell you about the mid-wives first, from long long ago hadi leo, until next year….
In other werds, because there are so many of our true true stories to share, because the world is bigger than 5, 7 or 9 bredrin en dadas, we’re going to continue sharing hadithi about s/heroes, teachers and legends we love
Continue breaking down the complex of fear generated around being betwixt en between binaries and identities, playing with masks and [ideologies of] time and space, kama akina dada wa Afrika halisi
Truthis, because we’ve shared so many of our fears before, the trust that’s been building, the safe spaces we’ve maintained, the metamorphosis we’ve witnessed and the love we’ve shared with each other en our loved ones have cushioned our rebirthing and transformed the pain
……….It was love in the first place, must admit, you blew me away, all the music…..inside of me,
got me feeling, some kinda madness…it was love…….
A woman speaks
Bout turning pages, making changes and showing (big) love….
So like we’ve blogged en said before, dis’ documentary/series is a work in progress: like we have a summer’s worth of footage, yet we’re still developing the storyboard, still deciding (the rest of) our core characters from the 32 (and then some) stories we collected, still trying to get another camera, laptop and editing software, funding, jus’ to start….the bigger point is we hustling to manifest our dreams of a video project and (going) back-to afrika movement/s
Kesho (kutwa) on the Q/t werd, F n’ G en people we’re learning from, who’re educating others in the practice of freedom and reclaiming indigenous afrikan knowledge systems.
[B is forbredrin en dadas in solidarity: our (vision) quest is to implement queer/trans youth arts collective/programs & circles for healing and self recovery in East & South Afrika in collaboration with anitafrika! dub theatre: an intersection of radical creativity, activity, and thought, human positive and moyo wa afrika: a coalition of Afrikans on the continent and in the diaspora who are committed to the reclamation of Indigenous Afrikan spiritualities, knowledge systems, economic praxis, and resources as the only viable means of addressing the colonially-induced dis-ease and dysfunction plaguing our peoples….
Lakini kwanza….]
A is foranitafrika! dub theatre: founded by artistic director d’bi.young in spring 2008 under the mentorship of visionary dub artist ahdri zhina mandiela, adt is a radical arts initiative rooted in the orplusi principles of storytelling, being developed by d’bi.young.
The 7 living/en/working principles are
language, orality,
political context (or protext),
rhythm, urgency, sacredness, and integrity:
fundamental tools in the (re)emerging genre of bio-myth-solo-performance storytelling or ‘dubbin solo’,
according to artistic director d’bi.young.
[en between the lines: the Q_t werd is a documentary series/work in progress, charting the evolution of these principles en reclaiming ancestral legacies……]
Through the intersection of these principles, the theatre seeks to explore and expand the relationship between the storyteller, their village(s), and transformation.
herstory
adt! is inspired by the seminal work of dubpoetry visionaries anita stewart and ahdri zhina mandiela. trained during the early to mid eighties at the jamaica school of drama (now the edna manley college of visual and performing arts), anita stewart wrote her thesis dubbin theatre: dub poetry as a theatre form on the progressive movement of dubpoetry into a theatrical realm which radically dramatized both the socio-economic tribulations of the jamaican people, as well as their potential for rebellion against their oppressors.
in her unpublished manuscript stewart identifies four major elements of the then emerging artform of dubpoetry — music, language, politics and performance — as bridges between the personal and the political and vice versa. stewart’s early documentation and analysis of dubpoetry as a working people’s socio-political movement, provide the primary lens through which adt! focuses.
in the late eighties early nineties, ahdri zhina mandiela coined and further developed the term dub theatre in reference to her own evolving work as a dub aatist. in the prelude to her dark diaspora… in dub: a dub theatre piece she defines dubtheatre as dramatized stage presentation comprised of varying performance component, including an indispensable/uniquely tailored dance language threading thru oral/choral work proliferating with endemic musical elements.
d’bi.young is a second generation dubpoet who learnt the artform from her her mother anita stewart and her mentor ahdri zhina mandiela. young is building on the foundational work of stewart and mandiela by developing dubpoetry/dubtheatre theory and practice through anitafrika! dub theatre: a launch pad of artistic training that locates itself within art for social change.
En A is for the legacies ofaudre lorde, that’s wassup!
Dream/songs from the moon of Beulah land I-V
I
How much love can I pour into you I said
Before it runs out of you
Like undigested spinach
Or shall i stuff you
Like a ritual goose
With whatever you think
You want of me
And for whose killing
Shall I grow you up
To leave me
To mourn
In the broken potsherds
Upon my doorstep
In silent tears of the empty morning?
But I’m not going anywhere you said
Why is there always
Another question
Beyond the last question
Answered
Out of your mouth
Another storm?
It’s happening
I said
II
Whenever I look for you the wind
Howls with danger
Beware the tree arms scream
What you are seeking
Will find you
In the night
In the fist of your dreaming
And in my mouth
The words became sabers
Cutting my boundaries
To ribbons
Of merciless light
IV.
You say I yam
Sound as a drum
But that’s very hard to be
As you covers your ears with academic parchment
Be careful
You might rip the cover
With your sharp nails
And then I will not sound at all.
To put us another way
What I come wrapped in
Should be familiar to you
As hate is
What I come wrapped in
Is close to you
As love is
Close
To death
Or your lying tongue
Surveying the countries of our mouths.
If I were drum
You would beat me
Listening for the echo
Of your own touch
Not seeking
The voice of the spirit
Inside the drum
Only the spreading out shape
Of your own hand on my skin
Cover.
If I ever really sounded
I would rupture your eardrums
Or your heart.
V.
Learning to say goodbye
Is finding a new tomorrow
On some cooler planet
Barren and unfamiliar
And guiltless.
It costs the journey
To learn
Letting go
Of the burn-out rockets
To learn how
To light up space
With the quick fiya of refusal
Then drift gently down
To the dead surface of the moon.
Kesho……The (A, B, en C’s Of the) Q_t werd in dub video
Creativity: recently, many mo friends have been questioning and sharing with us, [the storytellers behind The Q/t werd and Nekkyd,] what they think our art is about; we have heard en documented many ideas on the ways to build solidarity among QPOC communities, from a pan-afrikan perspective, yet we haven’t ‘officially’ fleshed out where we coming from and headed yet with this epic of a feature length documentary and series.
reality is, our visions (in dis here epic of a quest) have undergone deep transformashun: in the last 3 year(s) we have crossed different worlds and not only survived, crashed en burned, revived en thrived, but metamorphosed into the kipepeo of our wild dreams. our experiences of rebuilding villages are not what we expected them to be, they have surpassed our wildest fantasies en remind us of heaven on earth; now, alhamdulilah(t) we are grateful for the growing, loving communities, for all the healing and prayers in sacred spaces
in dis’ place here, in the diaspora, we found the source of Mama Afrika again, in her people. In our ancestral legacies en mestizoed religions, speaking black into (our +ve) blood.memories, breaking ugali with bredrin en dadas in prayer en solidarity.
the q_t werd is personal, political en religious:
personal like what you get when a documentary filmmaker/storyteller gets married to other artist/dadas, en where dem and their village produce a (dark) comedy series on lesbian, queer & trans (pan/afrikan) communities & a feature documentary on their ‘personal’ efforts to mobilise resources for queer/trans communities in East Afrika by designing the curriculum and fundraising for a queer/trans youth arts collective (QTYAC) in Kenya & Uganda. [that’s wassup]
the political is, we are far from where we started: individually and collectively, even though we’re back to the storyboard stages again, we’re still in the spaces between (post) production en grant writing.
Our hadithi remains the same, we are still on this (vision) quest to continue (coming into) fulfilling our (right) destinies, still creatively funding our activism, art and village building through strategically chosen jobs and “fly-by-night” ventures.
The bigger point is that, the religious piece isthe big(ga) hadithi, our nekkyd truth is the crux of our salvation and healing wise is, us dreaming of (going) back home with all our first world privileges, friends and families.
2. Compassion: Over a moon ago, we received the best advice we ever got from a wise afrikan womban’s reading of our quest/ion/s. We were reminded that love and truthfulness would have to determine our way of expressing ourselves and that we jus HAD (no choice but) to lovingly and sincerely communicate our thoughts to those around us.
the truth is, we don’t have any ‘official’ funding for our (art) work, and yet we have still been audacious (and over ambitious) enough to work on submitting, not only, a documentary to the Inside Out & Mpenzi before the end of this year, but designing the curriculum and mobilising (people) resources for QTYAC, to be run in Kenya & Uganda from May – August 2011.
Technically, the ‘boring’ or exciting stuff (depending on where you look at it from), that there are nuff people interested in getting move involved with/in our communities back at home, we’re trying because we CAN and if we don’t then folks who don’t know betta than us will prolly try to help us OUT for themselves, we’re doing all a dis’ organising because there’s sayings that go like we have mo to work with, in dis place here in the FIRST world, to serve our communities betta;
3. Courage: a love story
Skeleton woman
– A Tale of the Inuit –
She had done something of which her father disapproved, although no one any longer remembered what it was. But her father had dragged her to the cliffs and thrown her over and into the sea. There, the fish ate her flesh away and plucked out her eyes. As she lay under the sea, her skeleton turned over and over in the currents.
One day a fisherman came fishing, well, in truth many came to this bay once. But this fisherman had drifted far from his home place and did not know that the local fisherman stayed away, saying this inlet was haunted.
The fisherman’s hook drifted down through the water, and caught of all places, in the bones of Skeleton Woman’s rib cage. The fisherman thought, “Oh, now I’ve really got a big one! Now I really have one!” In his mind he was thinking of how many people this great fish would feed, how long it would last, how long he might be free from the chore of hunting. And as he struggled with this great weight on the end of the hook, the sea was stirred to a thrashing froth, and his kayak bucked and shook, for she who was beneath struggled to disentangle herself. And the more she struggled, the more she tangled in the line. No matter what she did, she was inexorably dragged upward, tugged up by the bones of her own ribs.
The hunter had turned to scoop up his net, so he did not see her bald head rise above the waves, he did not see the little coral creatures glinting in the orbs of her skull, he did not see the crustaceans on her old ivory teeth. When he turned back with his net, her entire body, such as it was, had come to the surface and was hanging from the tip of his kayak by her long front teeth.
“Agh!” cried the man, and his heart fell into his knees, his eyes hid in terror on the back of his head, and his ears blazed bright red. “Agh!” he screamed, and knocked her off the prow with his oar and began paddling like a demon toward shoreline. And not realizing she was tangled in his line, he was frightened all the more for she appeared to stand upon her toes while chasing him all the way to shore. No matter which way he zigged his kayak, she stayed right behind, and her breath rolled over the water in clouds of steam, and her arms flailed out as though to snatch him down into the depths.
“Agh!” he wailed as he ran aground. In one leap he was out of his kayak, clutching his fishing stick and running, and the coral white corpse of skeleton woman, still snagged in the fishing line, bumpety-bumped behind right after him. Over the rocks he ran, and she followed. Over the frozen tundra he ran, and she kept right up. Over the meat laid out to dry he ran, cracking it to pieces as his mukluks bore down.
Throughout it all she kept right up, in fact, she grabbed some of the frozen fish as she was dragged behind. This she began to eat, for she had not gorged in a long, long time. Finally, the man reached his snowhouse and dove right into the tunnel and on hands and knees scrabbled his way into the interior. Panting and sobbing he lay there in the dark, his heart a drum, a mighty drum. Safe at last, oh so safe, yes, safe thank the Gods, Raven, yes, thank Raven, yes, and all bountiful Sedna, safe… at…last.
Imagine when he lit his whale oil lamp, there she – it – lay in a tumble upon his snow floor, one heel over her shoulder, one knee inside her rib cage, one foot over her elbow. He could not say later what it was, perhaps the firelight softened her features, or the fact that he was a lonely man… but a feeling of some kindness came into his breathing, and slowly he reached out his grimy hands and using words softly like a mother to child, began to untangle her from the fishing line.
“Oh, na, na, na.” First he untangled the toes, then the ankles. “Oh, na, na, na.” On and on he worked into the night, until dressing her in furs to keep her warm, Skeleton Woman’s bones were all in the order a human’s should be.
He felt into his leather cuffs for his flint and used some of his hair to light a little more fire. He gazed at her from time to time as he oiled the precious wood of his fishing stick and rewound the gut line. And she in the furs uttered not a word – she did not dare – lest this hunter take her out and throw her down to the rocks and break her bones to pieces utterly.
The man became drowsy, slid under his sleeping skins, and soon was dreaming. And sometimes as humans sleep, you know, a tear escapes from the dreamer’s eye; we never know what sort of dream causes this, but we know it is either a dream of sadness or longing. And this is what happened to the man.
Skeleton Woman saw the tear glisten in the firelight and she became suddenly soooo thirsty. She tinkled and clanked and crawled over to the sleeping man and put her mouth to his tear. The single tear was like a river and she drank and drank and drank until her many-years-long thirst was slaked.
While lying beside him, she reached inside the sleeping man and took out his heart, the mighty drum. She sat up and banged on both sides of it: Bom Bomm!…..Bom Bomm!
As she drummed, she began to sing out “Flesh, flesh, flesh! Flesh, Flesh, Flesh!” And the more she sang, the more her body filled out with flesh. She sang for hair and good eyes and nice fat hands. She sang the divide between her legs, and breasts long enough to wrap for warmth, and all the things a woman needs.
And when she was all done, she also sang the sleeping man’s clothes off and crept into his bed with him, skin against skin. She returned the great drum, his heart, to his body, and that is how they awakened, wrapped one around the other, tangled from their night, in another way now, a good and lasting way.
The people who cannot remember how she came to her first ill fortune say she and the fisherman went away and were consistently well fed by the creatures she had known in her life under water. The people say that it is true and that is all they know.
[from women who run with the wolves: myths and stories of the wild woman archetype]
Wahenga walisema, it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot.
So the series starts before the turn of this century, not so long ago that many would have forgotten the major events in their lives, back in our youth’, when we analysed, questioned and instinctively rebelled, all the way to our growing (up) present selves, and our (collective) visions of the future.
Season one features 31 (+3) biomyth monodrama hadithi.
It only makes sense that we re-introduce ourselves, share the truth about our stories;
So we’ll start somewhere in the middle with these hadithi. In this place here, now…..
There are 4 afrikans (A,D,M en T) behind not only the q/t werd but, principally, the series that inspired dis’ quest for unity (with)in our diversity, Nekkyd.
There are also the growing villages, and the energies of many more who are weaving indigenUS & pan-afrikan narratives of ancestral memories and legacies; this tapestry includes those who are rebuilding healthy, loving, sustaining and sustainable communities.
[ between the lines: in The Q-t Werd is a vision of fundraising for yet another grassroots collective, bredrin en dadas in solidarity whose mission is to work on our own unity first by mobilising & sharing (capacity building) resources with grassroots groups working with queer/trans communities and sex workers in East & South Afrika. Our inaugural project is the Queer/Trans Youth Arts Collective set to run in Kenya & Uganda from May 2011]
hapo zamani za kale, kulikuwa na (m)wana wa Obatala, Ogun, Olokun na Yemoja…….
hadithi no. 14 is for (the spaces between) nneka en nneke in
neKKyd: Each episode is a different journey inside Nneke’s (Tsholo Khalema) world as her wry observations take us into the mind of a screwed up, loved up, lustful queer world.
Being a lesbian is tough, Being a black immigrant Afrikan lesbian trying to fit in…
well lets just say, to survive you gotta know the RULEZ TA BEIN’ A STUD!
NEKKyD explores the world of Nneke Dumela and her earth-shattering lust for the gorgeous and sassy women
Hadithi no.13 is for Medusa en Molisa
bio(myth)drama: on using a pseudonym
molisa nyakale is a name that comes from my family. It is the name of my great-great-great-grandmother on my father’s side, and a mark-er of my true true home….claiming this name was a way to link my voice to an ancestral legacy of womban speaking
Molisa is originally from the Shona, maybe even the Ndorobo. Partially re/constructed from mawu-lisa. I first read about her in the stories of sista outsiders.
Nyakale was given to me in a marriage vow; I chose to keep the name but rejected the suitor’s proposal.
10 years ago: I was in my last year of high school, full of possibilities and already getting used to rebelling with (self)righteous causes….I was excited to go to the next level, pursue freedom where I thought I was surely bound to get it, in uni.
9 years ago: I was in my first year of university @ the United States International University – Africa,
I had fantasised about this land of (queer) dates, milk en honey/when I got out of ‘here’, dreamed of growing up and getting a loft of my own, like the one that Alex had in Flashdance, where I would grow passion fruit in the backyard and be surrounded by big city scapes; I (en)visioned driving a car like the one that Vanessa Williams drove in Dance with Me, but all that dramatically changed when I finally realised one of my big dreams.
8 years ago: I landed in Tdot – Canada.
Bio/facts: Timelines that point not only to geographic locations, but also vastly different worlds betwixt en between ideologies, traditions and wealth
7 years ago: I was in my ‘first’ year of university at University of Toronto – Mississauga
Fiction/myths: lie in the names we’ve chosen, and (un)mask(ing)s discarded en nurtured in our quest to wholeness.
Facts: The village is necessary in re/locating our afrikan stories, the baba en mama of this biomyth-drama inspired and trans/formed by bredrin en dadas channelling the truth of their own stories in the practice of arts for revolushunary change en healing.
Bio/drama: My name/s have been rebellions, running to visions of betta lives. I first experimented with sounding alternate realities with word! when I was about 10 years old, from Henrialovna en Henrievna to Nyakale
4 years ago: the seeds of the Q/t werd were planted at the Inside Out festival with hadithi yetu!, and in Vancouver with 31 stories
2 years ago: the Q/t werd travelled to great rivers and re/discovered their source
Over a year ago: the Q/t was reborn in the Ngong Forest Sanctuary.
This year: we launched Nekkyd & The Q/t werd in ‘foreign’ lands, aka. these spaces that are our homes (for) now, documenting our individual and collective quests to continue fulfilling our destinies with bredrin en dadas in solidarity & colour spill productions…..
Hadithi no.3 is for cee as the crux, in swagger; en cea walker in “i”
These are (some of) the legends of the q/t werd…..
Since i been back/here, every moon that i count is one closer to my eventual return ‘home’,
in another place, not here, en….
particularly because of the un/expected, the burning & crashing, death, shattered dreams/wonderfull re/births, ever mo’ grateful for the home and communities I’ve been blessed en privileged to build with-in tdot. I give thanks for mo ‘new’ good friends, truth & reconciliation with enemies, turning into friends. I give thanks for the sun, moon, stars en big love.
Bless our freedom fighters, healers, peacemakers. Bless the motherless and fatherless. Bless the homeless.
ain’t travelled to many cities, but I’ve had nuff big geographical changes in my lifetime, to appreciate what is arguably the best, most functionally diverse city in the world. yes, i have big love for tdot, the first place I CHOSE to settle in, this lifetime.
ain’t necessarily the best place to be still, not when you’ve tasted afrikan shores, gone deep into the source of (say) the niger or nile river
Yet the truth is, i YAM afraid of going back home, of the consequences en sacrifices, of not being able to afford a good dentist, and not being able to go to blockobana or swagger, of redoing my resume to remove MOST of my relevant work experience, because it reads too ‘queer’, or too sexy, afraid that I may not get the revolushunary village, or the seven co-wives en a king, i been willing to settle for jus’ that one, but who knew that that would prove to be the most elusive task yet, like jus when you think you know, that this is really IT, en the bubble bursts, or a leaf sprouts, en it’s not the tree you thought it was at all, en in the surprise, re/learn more stories of the forest. Yet, like vasalisa who went deep into the forest, with only the doll that her mama gave her as guidance, I am not afraid of doing what feels right, what i just KNOW is good, healing….loving myself and others, sharing and caring not only for my friends, but for any who regard themselves as enemies.
I give thanks for growing up in the heart of where we all came from, for the ancestors whose shoulders I stand on, and for the journey that has led to to/day. Ifa, I pray that you continue to guide us in/to our right destinies, as we change the destructive path we’ve been on. Onikpite. So that we shall live.
it’s about creating positive energy and positive vibes around us [angel wainaina]….
Molisa wa NyaKale 