This workshop is open to people of African descent of all ages. This will be a safe space and Queer Black women are particularly encouraged to attend.
The workshop will cover in- depth, the understanding of Yoruba peoples of western Nigeria and Benin, West Africa. We will explore their ways of life, history and system of belief in relation to spiritualism in the world today.
Topics include different deities of the Yoruba and their special attributes as related to humans; their functions, powers and the significance of prayers to the deities.
Workshops will be in the form of spiritual circle with discussions on Orishas. (See attached flyer for full description)
Moyo wa Africa is a community of Africans on the continent and in the diaspora who are committed to the reclamation of Indigenous African spiritualities, knowledge systems, economic models and resources. Through this work we support our people in a process of resisting and healing from the damage caused by colonialism, and we move towards our vision of rebuilding healthy, independent and sustainable African societies.
For more info, please go to Moyowaafrica.com
This workshop was made possible with the support of the Community One Foundation and
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….
The hadithi we’re crafting in our villages are blood.bone.memories of our origins en transplanted cultures, being explored in the ‘best’ city of the world to live in ‘like’ global villages, (i heart)Tdot….The big arts festivals of the year, manifesto, TIFF & Word! Sound! Powah! may be fresh dun, we already got our fall/winter homework lined up, with a balanced diet of soul food: ‘continental’ en narrative docs,
‘drama’tic periods, more along the lines of….
our.own.stories
Revolushunary music…..
en wishlists of visions of bredrin and dadas building coalitions: human positive, moyo wa africa, colourspill & deviant productions, docuvixen films, elimu sanifu, kwari village, the people project, colour me dragg, lesblues, schools without borders, weapon of the revolution, Yoruba house project, afrakenya, GEAP, Farug, TITs & anitafrika dub theatre
[imagine if jus to start, these 18 (en then as many mo) groups shared mo resources and supported implementing each other’s programs….how many mo ghetto babies would be birthed en grow to thrive in de grassroots?…..dis journey we’re on in the q_t werd is exploring jus’ that, en all the spaces between, those fertile grounds where we give en receive love, where we seek guidance en manifest our right/full destinies]
These are some of the stories of the q_t werd: we’re retelling jus’ 5 of these, from Hamilton, Jo’burg, Kampala, Nairobi, back to Tdot: the crux of dis’ (re)organising that we documenting, growing in sacredness en urgency….
where we go so much tings to do en say n so lil’ time, where with the way tings been metamorphosing, we got no choice but to continue to live in truth, give en receive all the love that abounds, and do the best we can with what we got to fulfill our dreams.
Because the question remains, if we don’t, then who will?
Stay chuned…..kesho bado, e ni for elimu sanifu: pamoja tutafika!
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
August 1 is Emancipation Day in Canada and other countries that were once British colonies. Africans who had been enslaved in Antigua, Canada and South Africa were freed on August 1, 1834.
Africans who had been enslaved by the British in several Caribbean islands including Barbados, Dominica, Trinidad and Jamaica, in British Guiana (Britain’s sole South American colony) and in British Honduras (Britain’s sole colony in Central America) were subjected to a system of “apprenticeship” which lasted from 1834 to August 1, 1838.
Africans were forced to continue living on the plantations of the people who had enslaved them and worked 40 hours a week without pay (paid a pittance for work over 40 hours) as “apprentices.” They were forced to pay taxes and rent for the dreadful hovels in which they dwelled on the plantations. In 1838 two British men Thomas Harvey and Joseph Sturge documented the brutality of the “apprenticeship” system when they published The West Indies in 1837: Being the Journal of a Visit to Antigua, Montserrat, Dominica, St Lucia, Barbados and Jamaica, Undertaken for the Purpose of Ascertaining the Actual Conditions of the Negro Population of Those Islands. Harvey and Sturge wrote;
“A new kind of slavery under the name Apprenticeship; an anomalous condition, in which the negroes were continued, under a system of coerced and unrequited labour.” They also observed that “the planters have since succeeded in moulding the Apprenticeship into an almost perfect likeness of the system they so unwillingly relinquished.
An equal, if not greater amount, of uncompensated labor, is now extorted from the negros; while, as their owners have no longer the same interest in their health and lives, their condition, and particularly that of mothers and young children, is in many respects worse than during slavery.”
While the Africans were suffering in slave like conditions under the apprenticeship system, white people in Britain were in self congratulatory mode. The Guardian, a British newspaper, published the following piece dated Saturday August 2, 1834:
“Throughout the British dominions the sun no longer rises on a slave. Yesterday was the day from which the emancipation of all our slave population commences; and we trust the great change by which they are elevated to the rank of freemen will be found to have passed into effect in the manner most accordant with the benevolent spirit in which it was decreed, most consistent with the interests of those for whose benefit it was primarily intended, and most calculated to put an end to the apprehensions under which it was hardly to be expected that the planters could fail to labour as the moment of its consummation approaches. We shall await anxiously the arrivals from the West Indies that will bring advices to a date subsequent to the present time.” Meanwhile on Saturday August 2, 1834, a group of Africans were on their second day of demonstrations in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad because they were furious that complete freedom was still 6 years away. Africans in the Caribbean had learned that those who worked in the fields would be apprenticed until 1840 and those who worked in the homes of the slave holders or were skilled tradesmen would be apprenticed until 1938. It is hardly surprising that on August 1, 1834 a group of angry Africans had gathered at Government House in Port of Spain. Governor George Fitzgerald Hill sent the militia out to intimidate the group but the furious Africans stood their ground recognizing that the “apprenticeship” system was a scam used by the white plantation owners and the government representatives in the Caribbean to use free African labour for a further 6 years. In spite of the presence of the militia, the protest continued until nightfall when the protesters strategically withdrew because they were not allowed to be in the town during the night.
On Saturday August 2nd, when the group of protesters returned to Government House, Hill gave the order to arrest them. There were scuffles with the militia and some of the protesting Africans were arrested, tried, sentenced to hard labour and flogging and taken to the Royal Jail. Their incensed compatriots were forced to flee but returned on the Monday to continue the protest. The numbers had swollen by Monday and there were more clashes with the militia. Some of those who were arrested on the Monday were publicly flogged in Marine Square. The protests continued the entire week before it was quelled, but several of the Africans refused to return to the plantations and instead “squatted” in districts known today as Belmont and East Dry River.
On July 25th, 1838, Governor Hill called an emergency session of the Council of Government to seek approval of a special proclamation he had drafted which ended the apprenticeship period for Africans in Trinidad on August 1, 1838 whether they worked in the fields, homes or were skilled workers. Africans throughout the region protested their continued enslavement under the Apprenticeship system and on August 1, 1838 slavery was abolished in all the British colonies.
Since the abolition of slavery Africans have celebrated August 1st as Emancipation Day or August Monday. British author J.R. Kerr-Ritchie in his 2007 published Rites of August First: Emancipation Day in the Black Atlantic World: Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World has written about the global impact of August 1.
In her 2010 published Emancipation Day: Celebrating Freedom in Canada, African Canadian author Natasha Henry has researched and written about the history of August 1 celebrations throughout Canada including the connection of Caribana (modeled on Trinidad’s carnival) to Emancipation Day.
The government of Trinidad and Tobago was the first of the former British Caribbean countries to declare August 1 a National holiday in 1985.
In 1997 the Caribbean Historical Society (CHS) of Trinidad and Tobago, supported by the Ontario Black History Society (OBHS) advocated for global recognition of August 1st as Emancipation Day.
The OBHS has been successful in gaining recognition of August 1st as Emancipation Day at the Municipal and Provincial level and close to gaining recognition at the Federal level.
On August 1st the OBHS will host an Emancipation Day event at Nathan Philips Square.
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.
Molisa wa NyaKale 