Music Thoughts: Sarafina! Soundtrack: “Freedom Coming Tomorrow”:

            The whole album is appealing and recommended, as is other works by 

Mbongeni Ngema, this is just a favorite out the batch and the movie itself. Very catchy Afrobeat/Afropop music.

Why Is Freedom Found In The Mind First?

Whether in terms of psychology or the ideals of metaphysics, freedom is definitely found in the mental realm before the physical. Where ever the aspects or inkling of becoming freed up from burdens and troubles found in the physical, it can’t be amplified or operated at its best, unless there’s a mentality that is contributing to it, controlling it and maintaining it even after it’s in process.

It’s similar to currency, monies, income etc and getting a lot of it; usually, depending on where the mind is at, you’ll purchase and get more of what you already have. It’s the basis of your values, and what you define as ‘true-blue’ values. If you already had books collected, you’re going to get more; into sports and gym training equipment? More of that will come; Into unhealthy or degenerate culture? Pseudo-trends of society that doesn’t actually benefit you? That’s also what will increase, once there’s more capital to be spent on it.

Some of this can be placed upon priorities as well, so you know the right things to get but you go for the unnecessary things first. I’m stating that the use of money, currently or in your future will be based on your mentality, and a freed mind versus an unfree or enslaved one will ‘tell-the-tale’ of the differences of how you operate in this physical reality.

Overall as a concluding point: the mind is our truest most reliable computer (brain computer) and what software programs are inputted and running on it have to be known and understood. Just like situations of spam, junk mail or unnecessary files backing up on the physical computer, your mental can also have this happen, especially in the Information Age and any consumerism-based nation. So your concerns have to be of what’s on your mind – which automatically connects to what’s in your imagination: whether it’s near-dead, cloudy, or as it should be crystal clear, it’s a key determining factor of freedom mentally, thus the action to be followed up physically.

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.