Where is the ‘I’ in ‘Ubuntu’?
Being free, unowned and self-defining,I have no mark of ownership: no family = no surname: neither the slavery surname attached to my violently broken Windrush birth family, nor the germanic surname of my adoptive family, the name formally given as an infant.
‘Maroon’ is his Ancestral legacy.
My birth parents both had four different surnames during phases of their lives. I inherit that tradition of fragmented identities and fractured stories so common among displaced, dispossessed and mixed ‘colonised’ peoples:
Remi is my proper name from infancy. So is David.
Many other names have been awarded to me along the way including Dr T, Pablo Maroon, Rasta Dave and The T’cha among them. They form my name wardrobe.
The artist is a mirror, reflecting the perspectives and perceptions of those interacting with the art. And they are a transgressor because they break down the barriers between self and other, giving a sneak-peek of that higher unified reality. Like anyone, I am a bit of everything, maybe including a bit of you.
In some ways I am self-defining; but I never forgets that ultimately we are all defined by our impact on others. The Buddha says we do not exist from our own side, only from the side of others. Ubuntu teaches us that we are defined (‘I am’) by our relation to others (‘because we are’). That’s why I am an educator and artist: knocking down walls that divide us and using the bricks to build bridges that connect us.
Repeatedly blasted with childhood trauma and loss, yet blessed with role models from Johan Borgen to Paulo Freire to Dizzy Gillespie, I always had a strong sense of purpose and mission based on authenticity and social justice: Music and writings are just my way of helping to advance humanity’s healing from the Western colonial legacy of serial genocide.
Abracadia’s products (music, writings, etc) remind us how dominant (commercial) Western culture is degraded and degenerate; poor, empty, superficial and parasitic; dreary, deathly dull and damned.
It’s not that my work is superhuman, it isn’t, it’s very human. It’s just that the brute-led establishment is so inhuman they render themselves inferior in all aspects of humanities, including arts. They are stood in a ditch they made us dig for them, foolish as any brute ever was.
I hope that my works can signify yet another incremental step towards the inevitable realisation of our human potential to transform our world with wisdom: in peaceful, just, positive and constructive ways, through cultural action for Ubuntu.
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