Writings on a Mission for Identity
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, hill-surfing, 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, and bridging the gaps to unity and one love. We remember our Ancestors with gratitude for the heartbeat that we carry on its mission in our turn.
Abracadia tackles the mouldering source of today’s existential threat to humanity: With mould-busting wordings from where jazz, philosophy and science meet literature, mythology and wonder, Abracadia writings are alloyed with song to gleam and lift the spirit, wiping away layers of years of murk with the natural Ubik of Ubuntu.
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! Play on!
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