Mind Of Ikemba

It begins with his journey across the watery graveyard, the Atlantic Ocean, into which millions of ‘cargo’, enslaved Africans, were tossed into. They’re still there. They help him across.

He has arrived (Africa, although probably more in spirit). He approaches his ancestors, the person at the top is known as Agbala or Agbara in Igbo, the collective spirit of natural forces and the ancestors.

They are expecting him. (Ancestors are children waiting to be reborn.) (Also, more than 20% of enslaved Africans taken to the Americas were under 15.)

Their hats: unity (in ancestral judgement), ritual, heritage; the hats represent Agbala, they are reinitiating K (maybe it’s not all that, but just follow along anyway) back as a member of the lineage, as an eligible ancestor. He walks a path cleared by them.

They know him well, he is just now recognising them (Africa). He wears a do-rag though, a symbol of black American and diaspora culture, but look, it looks just like the other hats, but changed. They all see that. He has something to share.

The rest is mostly just cool shots.

'Oh, wow, look at all the neat stuff in Africa they didn’t tell me about’, ancestral gallery, and all that.

Frozen in time, the glorious past, also not a shanty.

Photo finish.

Just to really seriously draw meaning, these are the four primordial forces, the four divisions of the universe, in Igbo: Eke, Orie, Afo, Nkwo (all traditionally female), they are guarding potential, the gate, the future.

Oh, and she’s his chi (or The Chi).

#IGBOKWENU

‘Red Bone’, referring to an ethnic group in Louisiana and a black American term for people with fair skin, has strong ties to peoples in what is now eastern Nigeria. Originating from 18th century chattel slavery in the West Indies, the term ‘red bone’ takes from the creole term ‘red Ibo’ referring to fairer skinned black people. The term derived from observations of fair skin among some members of the Igbo ethnic group (and some other peoples lumped in from eastern Nigeria) whose numbers in slavery ratcheted up in the 18th century due to internal conflict in Igboland. European slavers and plantation owners often made observations and generalisations about various ethnic groups since different Africans were targeted for their knowledge, education and skills; a hefty amount of stereotyping and dehumanising was subsequently placed on various ethnic groups found in large numbers in slavery. One recurrent observation was the relatively higher prevalence of fair skinned people from the Igbo area, known then in the Atlantic as the ‘Eboe Country’. The fairer skin was demonised by planters as ‘sickly’ and the Igbo were characterised as weak because of this. This also meant their ‘price’ dropped and poorer planters in places like Virginia took many Igbo leading to a saturation of Igbo people there. The disdain, however, may have been fuelled somewhat by the fact that enslaved Igbo people weren’t unknown for their defiance of slavery, immortalised in the folktale of Ebo landing; they were also involved in a number of slave revolts all over the Caribbean, including in Haiti.

Ultimately, this characteristic was taken in as a negative one and the term ‘red’ was combined with ‘Ibo’ (Igbo) as a pejorative used by black people in the British West Indies for people who were black but with fair skin as opposed to mixed people who were just ‘red’ or ‘brown’ thus suggesting a hierarchy of phenotypes and hair types. Some creole linguists trace the term to Louisiana where it was heard as ‘reddy bone’, leading to the understanding of the term as ‘red bone’ with a less negative connotation as it is still used in AAVE today.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, TedxEuston (x)

All of the truth. She’s incredible!

Little girl dancing

ig roney_arewa

http://instagram.com/frankspiritx

http://instagram.com/joespiritxx

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