Remi D: to Pablo and back
As a person who had the privilege of growing up around some of the leading music artists of the time, I have always been aware of the responsibility that comes with it.
When you add it all up it’s the kind of experience that comes with an obligation to ‘pass it on’ as Bob Marley said.
Now a seasoned elder, I pass on the baton to the next generation as it was once passed to me as a youth.
Some of the names and faces, times and places that I experienced can be seen in the novel, ‘The Songtree: A Windrush Tale’, all nicely fictioned up to blur the truth line and make art of it, which is actually a truer reflection than a dry factual account could ever be.
With a life like a movie, so far out from ‘normal’ that it’s near unbelievable, there’s little need for fantasy. Of all the colourful scenes I could have used in the novel I chose but a few, but even what is included, gutter to palace, might sound hard to believe if it wasn’t fictionalized. Hopefully, in the fictional world of the work it all seems normal.
A lot of things come with a life like that. There’s no going into it all today. It’s too wide. But one thing does spring to mind: the issue of naming. It is easy for me. I have always identified as Remi and as David. Other’s have taken matters into their own hands, and as long as the names aren’t too stinking or otherwise unfit I don’t mind at all.
In fact I think it’s useful to have had so many people giving me so many names over time. It teaches me what effect I have in the world. A nickname, or an ‘eek name’ as it is properly called (old English for ‘also’ is ‘eek'), can do that better than a birth name or whatever.
To start with, I have had many actual surnames over the years, too many to mention. None of them applied to me as much as they reflected my changing situation. As a child I felt a bit like ‘brown paper packages tied up with string’, a pass the parcel person: birth mother’s name, adopted father’s name, birth father’s name and various combinations of all the above.
We can add to that the fact that I’ve earned more than one eek name or nickname from childhood till now. People can call me what they like. I give as good as I get too, inventing nicknames for lots of people. I believe people cannot help but show the world what they are by acting in it, and the names the world gives us help us realise the impact we have on it. As a zippy zappy child I was called things like Lightening and Showbiz, as a man I became such things as Extra D, Doctor Tea (using traditional Jamaican and African roots and herbs for healing) and Ras David, and as an elder I became The Wizard, Professor, and King.
And on top of that, as a mixed heritage urban author, musician, urban griot and educator, I have also worked under various different names over the years. I don’t know about how others may operate, but all my aliases were bestowed upon me rather than invented or wished by me. As someone who has been given nick-names (eek names) all my life I take to them easy if they fit.
Pablo is the latest name given to me. It came last year from the village people around Lakes of Africa; and from the street people of London’s Harlesden hood: Both out of the blue and totally independent of each other. The name fit just like a Cinderella slipper, so now Pablo is on his way to the ball too. The ball is a late night blues and it’s right where you are sitting now. Everyone’s going, including Lightening and The Wizard and Extra and Doctor Tea and all. You should be there too. Let imagination dance.
The ball is that ‘Party’ that Johnny Clarke sang about with the Mad Professor and me, but I changed the marimba for a set of vibes this time, all night trippers for golden slippers. Come to the party; it’s a true feast for mind body and soul, and a real celebration of life.
I honour the gifts of so many names. Names have power, given in the right spirit. But when it comes to authorship of my debut novel I use the names I have worn the longest, the names that suit me best because they have grown with me and helped to shape me as Remi D.
I like that I have no slave name, no ‘surname’. ‘Sur’ is French for ‘on top of’. A ‘surname’ is literally a name that says who is on top of you, who is your most direct oppressor, whose knee is on your neck. I prefer nick names, as long as they’re not meant to bully. The Buddha says we do not exist from our own side, but only from the side of others. That is why Ubuntu says I am because we are!
But the foundation stone of Western philosophy is the opposite to that: Descarte’s dictum: ‘I think therefore I am’. Clearly, this is relatively self-referential in relation to all that is ‘other’. In terms of epistemology, values and culture, therefore, that Cartesian foundation shows a relative level of selfishness and ignorance of the realness of others that allows for colonial genocides.
That is why I call myself a Jazz Philosopher. Western mind is all trussed up like a chicken for a formal dinner. Jazz mind wines and dines and winds and chimes. Unbinds. Unblinds. Laughingly trangresses and undresses the zombie emperor’s flaccid nakedness exposing his rotting grotesque form for all to see who’s been bending them over and rogering them raw till now. It is nightmare worse than a horror movie because it is real and millions die from it.
Abracadia denounces the horror of capitalist colonialism and announces the Afrocentric romance of what Paulo Freire called ‘utopian hope’.
Romance is an African invention after all, by the way. A topic for another day, perhaps.
For more on this and 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