Fort Knox: The Big Big Knockover
Abracadia culture-factory of music and words is a brand new paradigm in cultural action stemming from London’s ever-potent ‘Cosmopolitan Urban Mix’ (no acronyms, thank you).
Totally independent and community grown, Abracadia’s work is not influenced or compromised by corporate or other commercial interests. Not establishment or mainstream but strictly roots and culture.
Britain’s answer to James Baldwin and Ishmael Reed is long overdue. We African heritage brits are great with the language, but in a regressive England still very much dominated by the cruelest old plantation owner types, maybe it takes a Maroon to break through with a novel that’s not just going to comment on stuff, but change it! Could this be it? You decide.
Abracadia presents ‘The Songtree: A Windrush Tale’ - the novel, the album, the audiobook. The horse has bolted past the stable door and through the arch of the old plantation – the word is OUT.
Literary fiction is the UK establishment’s last bastion. Jealously guarded as Fort Knox, it sets the gold standard of intellectual currency, of what horizons are worthy or permissible for us to explore.
Like the music business, the book business is a corporate arena rigged to maintain the status quo. London’s Remi D is taking it by storm: Spartacus with a golden pen.
Come on and test we, see how Jah bless we, flashing and confessing our renowned creative blessing.
Jamaica influence rules culturally, naturally speaking, among everyday urban people in the hood up and down the world, but without the financial backing that buys mainstream headlines. It was ever thus: New York boys back in the 70s, Tribe Called Quest, KRS, Public Enemy: Jamaica blessed. On the shoulders of such giants, London’s Rasta-infused urban cultural mix has already taken on the music business and won, with its hard-hitting conscious underground hip-hop sweeping the world: Lowkey, Skinnyman, Stormzy and the rest, all over the world they influence the best.
Now Abracadia weighs in like a giant-killer, with a heavyweight novel of serious literary fiction, a novel that stretches the medium as never before for a whole new level of reading experience.
‘I don’t want nobody to give me nothing; just pick the lock; I’ll get it myself.’
Abracadia’s epic multi-media production, ‘The Songtree: A Windrush Tale’ is the culmination of Remi D’s life- work as storyteller, musician, academic educationist, teacher, lecturer and dad. It signifies the inexorable ‘movement of Jah people towards the victory of good over evil’.
This train carries no backsliders and cannot be derailed. Some of us have been waiting so long for this moment to arise. Those who know what they’re looking for will surely see what they’re looking at now.
For more on all topics to do with Abracadia and its work, don’t forget to check Abracadia’s weekly spoken word offering at the ‘Bit Of Soul Podcast’. Come and say hi, pass by for a try. Be great to see you there. Just roll up anytime to listen, chill and reason at the lush and refreshing oasis that is Abracadia.
Until such time - In Ubuntu
Remi