A Visual Healing: Travel to the Other Side with Mama Tangi

The exploration of Sound healing as a remedy that contributes to radical rest as an essential partner of Black Joy. Using performance to elicit participation is the remedy.

After having restfulness as a partner in my practice I began to remember my dreams again. I had a dream of a project where I had someone seated in a chair over a portal I had painted. I started to sing and play my crystal bowl over them. In an interview Simone Leigh discusses that African slaves were not allowed to read or write; therefore, remedies were sung to their descendants and passed on.

These are traces of my research process and the questions I ask:

What do I want to remedy? I want to counter rigid thinking, overwork, mental, emotional fatigue, and stimulate new pathways of doing. I thought about mining operations that are in place around the world that impact the health, wellbeing, and food sources of those living in their wake.

I am interested in the healing music of Kumina and Maroon music practices. This curiosity led to research of the Maroons in Cockpit Country. I learned out about the seventy-year legacy of Bauxite mining and its ongoing operations on the island. The Jamaican government has 51% ownership in the company that is actively rewriting boundary lines and breaking UN recognized Maroon treaties.

In collaboration with my son, we created a sound remedy to counter these harmful actions. This activation was documented on film during the spring equinox of 2023, initiated by songs and carried by the frogs.

*Whyte, David. “Mameen”, River Flow: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007. Many Rivers Press, 2007.