Founder
Remi D
The Reggae Blues Griot
Philosopher, Novelist, Musician, Spoken-Word Storyteller, Educator, Connector…
Upfully Treatya, Downpressor Beatya
Remi The T’Cha Humbly Meetcha
Remi D Maroon
It’s not what you do or the way that you do it...
It’s who you show up as and why!
London born 1950’s Windrush orphan: Arawak/Ashante/Judah Maroon. Multiple survivor of some heavyweight imponderables as a child in care…
Failed by the care system and expelled from school aged 15 for breaking the cane, Remi left school without qualifications and was pushed into the underworld streetlife he’d been groomed for…
Eight years later, escape at last! Remi used his skills to break into university, acquiring education ‘by any means necessary’. He graduated fair and square top of his year in philosophy whilst making his first marimba recording (with Mad Professor). Subsequent scholarship MA and PhD (cultural action in education using story) personally endorsed by Paulo Freire …
After twelve more years helping young people up through mentoring and teaching (R.E., English and music) and through storytelling, plus playing percussion with African and Reggae bands, Remi’s birth family traced him. That’s when he learned of his griot Ancestry:
Remi’s grandfather was a popular Maroon minstrel in 1920s and 30s Cockpit Country, the seventh generation of Ashante musician storytellers (griots) in a line traced back to our first arrival in 1700s Jamaica.
Discovering the coincidence between his Ancestors’ work and his own inspired Remi to leave school teaching and start Abracadia, committing full time to his Ancestral role as a griot in our time.
The Artist is…
Rebellious, the artist defies the tyranny of ‘what is’ to show ‘what can be’. They travel between this world and that.
Doubly reflexive, thinking about thought itself, the artist is also a mirror reflecting the minds of those interacting with the art…
Transgressive, the artist breaks down the barriers between self and other, giving a sneak-peek of that higher unified reality…
The arts and works of Remi D signify another step towards the realisation of our human potential to transform our world creatively, constructively, wisely through positive cultural action.
Literary influences
Names? Titles? Too many to say. Here’s a random but alphabetical handful of the scores Remi has enjoyed:
H. C. Anderson, James Baldwin, William Blake, Johan Borgen, Raymond Chandler, Phil K. Dick, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Umberto Eco, Kahlil Gibran, Thomas Hardy, Chester Himes, Homer, Langston Hughes, Elmore Leonard, Wilfred Owen, ‘Shakespeare’.
Plus one-offs like ‘Candide’, ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, ‘Confederacy of Dunces’, ‘Last Exit To Brooklyn’ and ‘Ringolevio’. And mythologies and traditional tales from all times and cultures. And academic stuff from Plato to Wittgenstein and from Hamlet’s Mill to Paulo Freire. And spoken-word stand-up philosophers Lenny Bruce, Lord Buckley and Richard Pryor.
Musical influences
Once again, for Remi there’s too many to mention. But here’s an indicator of the vague intention:
Drums: Art Blakey and Leroy ‘Horsemouth’ Wallace for pure swing; Phil Seamen and Elvin Jones for free expression, Max Roach and Ginger Johnson for polyrhythm and punctuation.
Vibraphone: Charlie Parker, Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison and Billie Holiday (phrasing), Lennie Hibbert, Milt Jackson (approach), West African Ancestral ‘Marimba’ tradition (overall vibe, Ancestral legacy).
Melodica: Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison, Billie Holiday (phrasing) Augustus Pablo, Stevie Wonder (vibe) John Coltrane, Bobby Wellins (prayer and whispers)
Vocal: Sugar Minott, Bim Sherman, Bob Marley (delivery), Yabby You, Keith Hudson, Fred Locks (nerve and freedom to be raw.)
You’ll find traces of all of them in Remi’s music.
And beyond them, there’s a whole spectrum of divine-light musical magi who’ve made a mark on his sound, from Miles, Monk, Mittoo and Fela to Ernest Ranglin, Allen Toussaint and Keith Hudson, from Mayfield, Hathaway and Hutson to Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Edgar Winter’s ‘White Trash’, Roy Ayers, Kenny Rankin’s ‘Like A Seed’ and Erykah Badu. It’s a looong list.
Mission Ambition
Let’s Go Fishin’
Remi’s mission as a marooned elder is to help others up by sharing his knowledge and experience and by passing on what of value was passed on to him by the great and the humble. And it is to connect with you co-imagineers, readers and listeners who appreciate what Remi shows up as.
Remi uses Abracadia to nail his colours clearly to the mast. First by denouncing the 500 year ongoing historical crimes of mass kidnap, mass human trafficking, mass enslavement, mass land and resource theft and mass genocides by profiteers without conscience.
Then by announcing the new paradigm of connected consciousness from pan-African ubuntu to organic, indigenous, community based and nature related world views and projects worldwide.
That new paradigm is spreading irrepressibly, sure as gravity’s arc, across the globe with a promise of better new tomorrows.
“Ours is no small task,” says Remi. “It requires diverse hands and hearts to join in common cause. Wherever we look we see hands and hearts reach out to each other in our time. A net of humanity. Many are emerging. Take heart. Lend a hand.”
‘One hand alone cannot tie bundle’, goes the old Jamaican saying. Remi welcomes you aboard a destined great sharing that unfolds into a great shared destiny for all.