Writing
Rising with the tide of history
Redefining what a ‘novel’ can do
The House of Abracadia
turning walls into bridges and publishing the difference
A mission from the gods
Looking down from that ancestral nest, the power of the spirit moves in clouds that roll across the hills of Jamaica’s Maroon Cockpit Country.
Rolling with those clouds, Abracadia is on a mission as part of the ecosystem of spiritual consciousness that manifests as the natural mystic, bringing light to the darkness, meaning to the void. We remember our Ancestors with gratitude for the heartbeat that we carry on its mission in our turn.
The mission is not a ‘force’ in the expansive Western tradition, it is an ‘element of nature’ in a tradition far more Ancient and less assailable. Like a cloudbank, each part contains the fractal form of the whole, yet all have a given role to play. Specifically, Abracadia’s mission is to restore the Ancestral unity of story and song.
The word is power. Stories form our identities from the cradle to the grave, all the while steering our image of what is and what ought to be. In the absence of the right stories told in the right ways, humanity faces an existential crisis of identity and historical mission. As individuals, we are diminished in self-image and imagination. Collectively we are fractured and incapable of action as a result.
Abracadia addresses that existential threat to humanity with a mould-busting debut novel that babylon system cannot touch: a novel with music and song!
Till now, the custodians of the publishing industry have exploited the veritable goldmines of creativity expressed from the indigenous and dispossessed around the world. A business strategy modelled on colonial capitalism.
Till now, traditional art forms of storytelling have been largely denigrated, their expressions misappropriated to control and appeal to the appetites of a gentrified audience.
It is for the benefit of all humanity that our stories be heard unadulterated, including as song. Not only does it have the power to reverse the process of cultural control and sanitisation, but it also carries the potential for us to liberate ourselves by actualising the unity within our plurality.
Story as a medium has long been known for its healing and liberating qualities, look how Aesop’s fables won his freedom from Roman slavery, or how 1,001 Arabian Nights of story healed a psychopath and freed his captives.
That is why Abracadia’s writings are published and distributed independently. We stand for Ubuntu, with zero interest in or aspiration to west-livity or its follytricks.
Our writings stand outside the purview of the conceited Western tyranny of mediocrity. Our work shines, we are cinders, we clean up!
Their use of symbology shows how babylon uses ‘magical’ or ‘transformative’ powers, science as we say, more obvious in its effect than in its execution; we see it applied across all their fields of industry and technocratic endeavour. Said powers are exclusively applied to advance a transparently destructive agenda of global diminution of humanity. The literary industry is just one wing that plays a part in defining the field of thought in favour of those destructive elites.
‘On a mission’ (with Sugar Minott) to ‘fight to the top’ (with Michael Prophet), Abracadia rides in, surfing on the clouds that roll over Maroon country, vibesing on a natural mystic breaker of the higher heavens. Abracadia shares that mission of Rastafari and Ubuntu, the mission to restore balance and meaning in human life. May the work of our hands and the meditations of our heart be acceptable.
Music and story have never been separable in our griot tradition. It is not our problem if the West’s literary industry cannot match up. It’s not our fault they built their house of cards on the false dichotomy of song and story. We come fi mash dem good with our musical literary fine art, like Gary Sobers’ sixes! ‘Dem a fi get a beating’ like Tosh sang it!
No foul! They cannot compete with our skills at all! They are getting hammered now! Play on!
That mission starts here, with Abracadia’s Maiden Voyage:
The Songtree: A Windrush Tale
By David ‘Remi D’ Remilekun
This novel is the BOOM! Jamaican high-grade!
.45 calibre Maroon literary fiction you can dance to!
‘The Songtree: A Windrush Tale’
Where literary fine art meets escape-velocity action.
Where imagination meets realism like flames in oceans deep …
Under-fed, under-age, underworld underdog slips through this dimension into the mother of all conspiracies, where matching ends of past and future marry and the 21st century underground railroad is on the move.
A bit like a trip out of Phil K. Dick, ‘The Songtree: A Windrush Tale’ is a reality shifting game changing novel written to be once read, twice recommended.
Based on a true story, ‘The Songtree’ is the ultimate tale for our time. It stands at the wild frontier of fiction, exposing the matrix of reality and turning it on its head.
Trace the epic life journey of Tushay, a semi-feral Windrush child lost in the international underworld of 70's nightlife where thieves, pimps, hookers, killers and drugs mix with Voodoo priests, Chinese monks, Nordic elites and the leading lights of Jazz.
And trace the seventy thousand year history of Jazz unveiled through ancient mystery and wonder, and emerging through the mother of all conspiracies revealed in the Bible.
‘The Songtree’ evokes the soul-penetrating writings of James Baldwin and Ishmael Reed, and it aims to give the US giants a good run for their money. Could it actually stand up alongside such greats, in that league of artful, soulful, and vital for human progress? Read it and see for yourself.
With sticks and brains against guns and brutality, Jamaica’s Maroons seized independence from British colonial rule by sheer force of character 200 years before the rest of Jamaica. As a Maroon descendant, David has forged yesteryear’s spear into drumsticks and pens to evoke that great heritage of liberating spirit and intellect. It is the heritage that inspired Bob Marley, Count Ossie and others to express through the music of Rastafari. And it is a heritage to be proud of: ital livity, no trouble who no trouble we, no war, no slackness, strictly conscious reasoning: the roots and culture of Ubuntu. That is the spirit driving the music and the novel. The music’s groovy, check the little taste on the music page, such talents proliferate among we Jamaicans. But the novel is the main event, and no work of serious literary fiction from that Maroon heritage has ever broken through before.
As a testament to Jazz and Reggae, ‘The Songtree’ is the FIRST EVER novel with original audible music between the covers: a foot-tapping read that enhances the experience of a novel as never before. And it is also a highly cinematic novel, feels like a movie; the music fits on that level too. Altogether immersive.
While it changes what ‘a novel’ is and can do in such new and exciting ways, at root ‘The Songtree’ covers the same story as any real artwork, the only story there ever is: the story of what it means to be human.
Unavailable through any corporate retail outlets, ‘The Songtree: A Windrush Tale’ is reserved for sale through selected independents and through the Abracadia shop.
‘The Songtree’ isn't just a blasting declaration of literary revolution, it is proof of blessed victory!
It overcomes a destructive and outworn reality by blurring and trangressing the reality-fiction line. And it crystalises the creative soul-revolutionary spirit of Jazz, infusing it into every page.
Which is mightier, pen or sword? Remember how a book can lift our horizons to transform our world? It is out of the author’s hands now; David has faithfully done his bit. Over to you.
David wrote ‘The Songtree: A Windrush Tale’ to be ‘once read, twice recommended’. So buy it. Read it. Hear it. Feel it. Dig it. And then, if you feel it’s ‘move-over-James-Baldwin’ or ‘scootch-up-Mumbo-Jumbo’, it’s for you to holler and pass it on. No corporate machines here. We are the change we need.
Literary fiction is the most jealously guarded field of cultural transmission in UK; it’s where the meanings of the world and its constituents are most highly defined. If everyone who reads this novel and considers it important passes it on to two or more others, we shall overcome the bad-faith tyranny of mediocrity imposed by the West’s literary establishment. See the injustice it breeds, the corruption of humanity - filtering all the way down from their serial genocides. That stops now.
Now, with the advent of this musical novel, ‘Natty Dread [is again] Taking Over’. (Check Joseph Hill’s Culture.) Every time ‘The Songtree’ is passed on, another fruit of spiritual darkness spoils on the vine, giving way to something much sweeter: the next iteration of the Maroon legacy that inspired Rasta reggae.
Fed up with the endless depressing news-cycle of hope’s systematic demolition? Restore some faith in the human mission? Maybe uplift the human condition? You know the book to read!
David on The Roots and Genesis of the Songtree
From age 7, when my world totally disintegrated for the second time and I learned the big bad ways of West End nightlife, I always felt that the Jazz world I grew up in should be documented.
The flickering neon candy twilight setting. The faces: good, bad, funny, sad; some famous, some infamous and some invisible. The stories: deep and shallow, wise and mad. The transgressive values: anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-war, anti-colonial; pro-liberation, pro-justice, pro-creativity and pro-humanity. It was the pioneering phase of London’s switched-on urban rebel youth culture, well worth remembering.
Beside that general idea of a book about the 60s-70s London night-life scene, the idea that I might one day write a book about social justice came 7 years on, just around my 14th birthday. That’s when I first read James Baldwin, ‘Go Tell It On The Mountain’ and ‘The Fire Next Time’.
I knew I would have to reply to James one day, when I was ready. I had no idea it would take me so many years, all in my spare time and with gaps of years and lots going on. The story wound around and about like the spring-waters of the Nile behind me below at Africa’s great Nnalubaale, ‘home of the gods’, source of the Ancestors, as well as of the Nile.
When you reach River Jordan, keep on going:
‘The Songtree: A Windrush Tale’ is an act of love: It all began as a call in distress to the Ancestors and to a mother I never met, all faceless but for a mirror, nameless but for a breath.
The final iteration of the novel was motivated by the need to communicate across time with my long lost children, the latest generation to suffer harm from England’s toxic norms:
Ripped up families, lost and harmed children, every generation similarly affected since first we were kidnaped, trafficked and enslaved. Proof of post-enslavement-trauma-disorder. (See Joy DeGruy.)
Punch-drunk and bedazzled, too many people remain mired in mental slavery and wage-slavery, stuck in a rut so deep and long we’ve forgotten there are other ways and better.
Sometimes we need reminding that empires and systems are not almighty, inevitable or permanent. In fact they are the opposite. And it is actually quite simple to snap an evil spell and be free.
‘The Songtree: A Windrush Tale’ breaks the colonial chains once and for all. Rising with the tide of history, ‘The Songtree’ is part of the cultural and spiritual battle against the 500 year long Americas holocaust. And it is part of the reason why we shall win, and why we are confident in the victory of good over evil.
… Step up: Forward to Ubuntu
There is a brave new hope spreading across Africa today, bubbling on the rippling waves of positive vibes. Those vibes stretch all the way from Louis ‘Pops’ Armstrong, the man who styled what jazz means, pictured here bringing it back home!
It’s easy to see why Pops has often been likened to the angel Gabriel. All the jazz greats as well as the rest form the big parade led by Pops, from Duke Ellington to Charlie Parker to John Coltrane to Hugh Masekela and on …
That’s why those positive vibes run through musical voices of Nina Simone and Miriam Makeba, of Bob Marley and Erykah Badu and on and on … All booming out of stereos from Marrakesh to Capetown.
Every time we hear the sound we know that we shall win. That is why it heals and makes us happy. And that fact is what ‘The Songtree’ was written to witness and to celebrate.
Those positive vibes swell like a well in all hearts aligned to humanity’s motherland and to the rising tide of Ubuntu.
‘The Songtree: A Windrush Tale’ is just one tree, the first literary offering from The House of Abracadia. A seed to sow for a forest to grow, one page of a new chapter aligned with the 21st century global spirit of Afrocentric Ubuntu!
This is a renaissance that began with Langston Hughes tapping his foot with pride to Louis Armstrong’s sacred jazz parade. It is the eternal flame of humanity that lasts to the end of time. Abracadia tends that flame and truly cherishes it. If that passion for celebrating our wonderful world beats in the musical heart of your lines step along and add to the Abracadia chorus.
