House in the Park: Great Event in Atlanta

This turned out to be an awesome event and a re-connection into an afrocentric musical environment. In a funny way, it’s trippy I never knew about it beforehand, as did a lot of other performance artists, B-Boys, etc as they let me know they were aware of it already. Just my being out the loop for a while is all, and though I didn’t have my direct camera, I got a few gems whether the format was video or pictorial through the smartphone.

The sound systems caused their ‘booms’ to be heard even before you’d fully entered the park; all the DJs (DJ Kemit, Salah Ananse,  Kai Alce And Ramon Rawsoul) put Afro House in full effect in a way that hit plenty of vibes, interlacing even 70s funk, afrobeat, electro and hip-hop. The variety that never got tiresome or out of whack; it’s only the body limits that would stop any of us from dancing, from the everyday party-people but definitely in reference to all the pop-lockers and break-dancers that turned up on the scene in various ciphers. This intensity definitely reinvigorated my own skills…

The park environment’s communal nature was felt, even in the context of it getting overcrowded, as the afrocentric fashions, whether directly adorned by the people or displayed by the vendors, couldn’t help but catch your eye: tattoos, ankhs, crystal jewelry, pan-African colored clothing and of host of uniqueness that I could list on and on. You can’t help but want to give credit where it’s due when people put thought into items and appearances, giving more life to an event.

A sister sporting  the "Om" spiritual symbol as tat

Again, the place got packed, definitely a good thing but more than I’d imagined, and with that, I was lucky to make it back outside the bodegas to catch the capoeira practitioners had formed Roda for Jogo. It was good seeing brothers doing the Afro-Brazilian dance-fight game (and in a way, ritual) with drums, shakers and berimbau in musical accompaniment to the participants’ spinning martial artistry.

The Roda (Capoeira game circle) Formation 

Overall, it’s two thumbs up and an experience I’ll definitely get into when it returns. Events like this featuring Afro House/Electronic Afropop, have the energy that’s on par with Carnival (of any kind of any place). It was something refreshing and sustaining, even in some sense supplanting Rave – at least in the sense where it didn’t intermix it’s sounds with it.